


Bring Him Home

by Oceans_Away



Category: Lore Olympus (Webcomic)
Genre: Agape is on her phone, Anger Management, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bondage, Consensual Kink, D/s relationship, Dominant Aphrodite, Eros is an angel, Especially if there's a love goddess involved, F/M, Family, Family Feels, Femdom, Gen, Healing, Impact Play, Long-Distance Relationship, Love Conquers All, Mental Health Issues, Mortal Realm, Pegging, Porn With Plot, Reunion Sex, Stripping, Submissive Ares, Taking care of the golden boy, mental stress
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:47:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 76,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25559788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oceans_Away/pseuds/Oceans_Away
Summary: It's the end of a long, brutal and unsuccessful military campaign in the Mortal Realm. Ares is exhausted, frustrated, and longs to be back with Aphrodite and his children. But the Ares that comes back to Olympus isn't himself. His family find themselves dealing with the aftermath of defeat, and Ares needs them now more than ever.[This story takes place following a war, but is in no way meant to be a portrayal of the veteran experience or PTSD. Rather, it aims to take the tension between Ares' work and home life as the setting for his struggles with self-worth, self-understanding, and anger management. I wanted to look into the darker side of his inner world, and the potential problems it could create for him and those he loves. This fic does therefore deal with battles with mental health, as well as some frustration from a loving family who doesn't see the whole picture yet. But it is also about healing and learning to trust yourself and your loved ones. The boy's gonna be OK. Only chapters 2, 5 and 10-12 have smut, but I've marked it explicit and leaned into the porn tags because Ares' sexual relationship with Aphrodite is such a key theme and the core element of his healing. Wound description in Chapters 1 and 3.]
Relationships: Aphrodite/Ares (Lore Olympus)
Comments: 78
Kudos: 71





	1. An Uneasy Peace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ares moves among his mortal soldiers in the aftermath of a gruelling defeat. He tries to help, he thinks about home, he pets a horse. Also he's naked for a lil bit, for... plot...
> 
> [CW: Descriptions of wounds and blood.]

There are three known substances that are physically impossible to scrub off the skin, that, no matter how hard you try, you will still find stains and grains of them for weeks following, until they, presumably, simply become one with your essence: sand, blood, and glitter. 

At least the army didn’t use glitter bombs. 

Ares stood to his hips in the turquoise sea, chafing his skin raw as he tried agitatedly to remove the crust of blood-soaked sand from his naked body. The sparkle of the water surrounded him with diamante light, hazing him, dazzling him, turning him into the golden trail of a comet through white stars. He shovelled water up his arms and torso and rubbed fiercely. Stodgy, red-brown clumps and flurries of dry, irritating grit splashed into the sea, or peppered its surface so he had to slosh his palm around to be rid of it. Underneath, his skin was taut, sapped dry by filth and perspiration, it felt like it might tear every time his muscles flexed. The sea was cool and he let it numb him. The undertow pushed at his legs like a needy, unusually strong cat. 

He took a breath and ducked fully into the water. His muscles groaned as he was submerged in the soothing cool, his hair flowing like spilled cream. 

A piercing sting. 

He shot back to standing, shattering the calm surface and spraying flashing shards around him. He clutched at his chest. 

_ You fucking asshole.  _ He snarled at himself.  _ You just literally rubbed salt in the wound.  _

The gash between his collar and his left pectoral was barking at him angrily, shining like split cherries. He dug his fingernails either side of it, trying to tease the pain out and dissipate it. 

_ Guess I ought to clean it, actually _ . 

He clenched his teeth and bowed into a soft, swelling wave. This time, he eased the water over the wound, grumbling as the salt nibbled the nasty slice clean, like a garra fish. He stood again and tentatively drew a deep breath in to expand his chest. The gash whined. He huffed out and wriggled his shoulders a little to throw off the latest grope of pain. It was just above where the rim of his breastplate would lie. That was going to rub like a bitch. He huffed again and bent to wash his hands. 

Blood still lingered in the patterning of his palms and in thin, stubborn streaks up his forearms. He mused on how much he looked like tropical fruit, pink grapefruit staining pineapple. 

_ Tropical fruit? What is wrong with you? People died.  _

He focused on the blood. It jealously absorbed the light, drawing the summer out of the world. It picked out the details of his hands, contorted them, alienated them from his familiar form. The stains yawned. The sheen of water made them look fresh again, gummy, oily, spreading to cover his hands until mournful, vengeful red streamed from his fingertips. His head pounded. Now they were open maws emerging jaggedly from his own flesh, grimacing at him, his own blood pouring through ragged rips. His stomach heaved and bile burned the back of his throat. He braced himself and clamped his lips shut and swallowed with determination. 

_ Just fruit, fruit is fine, fruit is good, cranberries, raspberries, watermelon, blood orange. Nope, that was a bad one. Uuuh… strawberries. Ok. Strawberries. Strawberries. Strawberries.  _

The nausea subsided. He inhaled and exhaled, slow and controlled. He finished washing his hands.

He waded out of the water and felt the droplets sizzle on his skin as the white heat of the late afternoon sun glared at him. He was half way toward the shade of the dusty rock face of the cove that he’d stripped in, when he heard a terrified jabbering to his left.

“You’re… you’re a… a GOD!”

_ Shit.  _

He must have dropped his invisibility by mistake. He turned with an irritable wince and saw a young soldier. Very young. Too young. His face was rodent-like, scrubby with the first patchy attempt at a beard and topped with a knotted mess of pale brown hair, the same colour as his heavily-freckled face. His nose was crooked from at least one break and his arm was bandaged from wrist to shoulder. He gaped at Ares with a mixture of terror and zeal.

Ares tried to play it cool. “Thank you.”

“No!” The boy yelped. “You’re a real god!” His knees rattled together and he dropped to the ground, bowing so deep into the sand it rippled around his arms.

Ares suppressed a groan and strode past him. “Get up, I’m not in the mood.” 

He reached his clothes and armour as the boy raised his head, staying on his knees, his freckles bunching around his shattered nose in confusion. Ares fished up the bundle and strode back to the sea, stepped into the lap of the shallows and ducked to one knee, dumping it all in with a splash, scrubbing the breastplate and ringing out the tunic and leathers. He could feel the boy staring at his back. He ignored him. Most animals go away if you ignore them. He stood, scrunched his tunic up tight and squeezed the water out of it with a hail of little splashes, then shook it out and pulled it over his head. It clung to the contours of his body, the hem pasting to the top of his thigh. Droplets trickled from his hair into his eyes, he rubbed them testily. 

The boy was still staring. He started to stammer. “My… My Lord… If you have appeared to me, how… how may I… how may I serve…”

“Give me your cloak.” Ares grunted, blinking more droplets away.

The boy nodded and removed his scarlet cloak. It was too big for him, his father’s perhaps. He inched as close to Ares as he dared get, like he was approaching a tiger, and held the cloak out at arm’s length. He gasped as Ares snatched it. He raised an eyebrow as Ares used it to roughly towel his hair and face and chucked it back without looking at him. 

This was a strange god. His hair stuck out in frizzy coils where he’d rubbed it. He had a deep gash across his upper chest. Sand was caked on his shin. He noticed it and swore and crouched back into the sea foam to brush it off.

The boy bit his lip, twisting the cloak in his hands, then tried again. “How else may I…”

“I’m fine.”

The boy folded an arm across his body and scratched his elbow awkwardly. “But, you appeared before me.”

The god tutted to himself as he tried to untangle his pteruges. “Yeah, my bad. Wasn’t supposed to.”

The boy felt a prickle of something other than awe, he sucked his lips in and frowned. “But, you…”

Ares felt it. It was small. It was weak. But he felt it. Anger. Well, fine. If this kid was going to mess with the bull… He rounded on the boy with a spray from his feet, the sunlight shooting off him as if off metal or glass. “I what? Hmm? Tried to have a fucking wash in peace without some weasel pawing at my feet? Do you think this is how the gods appear to mortals? Do you think you are who they choose? You obviously don’t pay attention in class.” He turned back to his pteruges, wrenched them straight and buckled them at his waist.

The boy shrank back. That little spike of annoyance receded. A cloud passed across his face. He folded both his arms across his middle and looked at the sand with a dark blush under his eyes.

Ares glanced up and looked at him properly for the first time. He was obviously low rank; not a scrap of bronze on him, and nothing seemed to fit particularly well. What was he even doing here? In Sparta, you had to have a son before you fought. Maybe he should look into spreading the practice. The boy’s cowed face nettled him. 

Ares sighed. “Fine. What kind of stuff were you thinking?”

The boy perked up, but also looked suddenly extremely put on the spot. “Um… I could… make a sacrifice?” He ventured, spreading his palms and clumsily dropping the cloak, which made him jump.

Ares nodded and bent to lace his sandals and shin guards. “Make it a cow. I’ve already had goat twice this week.”

“Of course, My Lord.” The boy bowed shakily. “Oh. Which one are you?”

“Which one?”

“Which of the gods?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, did I not formally introduce myself while you were staring at me buck naked trying to do my laundry?”

The boy rubbed the back of his neck and glanced away.

“Make it out to the Saviour of Cities. I’ll appreciate the irony.”

The boy nodded.

“Or Him Harnessed in Bronze, since you’ve let me get dressed now.” He slotted his breast and back plates back into place and sucked in through his teeth as the metal prodded the soreness just beneath his wound.

The boy bowed like a badly strung marionette. Ares nodded curtly at him and started to stride from the cove. 

The boy watched the god’s broad back and felt something tighten in his gut, then twang like a bow releasing. He spoke with his adolescent, breaking voice squeaking. “Do you have any divine messages you wish me to convey?”

The question clanged off Ares’ armour. He halted and turned back.

The boy forced himself to meet a pair of eyes like glowing carnelians wreathed in flame.

Ares looked into the boy’s eyes. They were flecked green. He looked like a baby deer. 

“No.”

The boy swallowed and steeled himself. “My Lord, forgive me, it has been such a gruesome campaign. I think… I think a message could…”

Ares felt his skin flare like sunburn. “What?” He snapped.

“Help.”

“Help with what?” He glared at the boy. The boy crumpled back, but held firm, like a planted flag in a high wind. “Well?” Ares pressed. “What do you want? Tactics? Better weapons? Quicker deaths?”

Another flicker of that distinctive weak flame. “Not now. Surely… some comfort…”

Ares ground his teeth. “I have no comfort for you.” 

He turned and began to walk again, taking long resolute strides that drove deep into the sand and left large, deliberate footprints.

The boy’s flicker grew. Ares felt it poke the back of his neck as the reedy voice called after him. “I will tell them something then. I will tell them I saw you and you spoke of them with great honour. I will tell them you were proud and that you will be with them still as they lend their strength to other things.”

Ares’ toes curled as he stopped again. He did not turn. He spoke quieter. “What other things?”

“What other things?” There was incredulity in the shrill reply. “Their fields, their families, their lovers.”

“Those things are not my province.”

The boy forced his voice deeper, sending a tremor through it. “They are loyal to you in war and peace, in victory and defeat, can you not show them the same?”

And now Ares turned. The boy was glaring after him with his bony fists clenched at his sides and his juvenile anger dribbling rather feebly out of him and making a humid mist in the salty air. He was shaking. But he contained it well. And he had a good, studied, soldier’s stance in the sand. 

Ares’ words came level, gruff, unpolished, unperformed. “Tell them I was in the battle.”

The boy’s brow tightened. “My Lord, the battle is over.”

Ares’ jaw set. “Then I have nothing for you.”

He held the green gaze another moment. Then he turned once more and walked back towards the encampment, leaving the boy with his balled up cloak at his feet. 

He swept his invisibility back around him.

*

The camp was somehow both sluggish and bustling. Half the soldiers were moving about with purpose, checking up on the wounded, delivering messages, organising stock, swinging swords and axes to lazily go over what they did wrong. The other half lay in the shade of their tents or clustered together sitting on crates and packs, playing dice games and reading out the smut sent by their lovers. There were occasional bursts of rowdiness, but the atmosphere was sullen and weary. A dense scent clung to the sea air; metal being sharpened on stone, food going off in the heat, large numbers of men living in close quarters with limited opportunities to wash, sandals worn for too many hours, sweating horses. Ares passed too close to one of the beasts and it snorted and whinnied and shuffled its hooves nervously, tossing its head. 

A large man with a nasty black eye waved at it.  “Quiet! You dumb brute!”

Ares reached up and stroked the horse’s nose. It was a brute. A hefty thing with hooves like upside-down cereal bowls and solid, mahogany flanks. He patted its neck and shushed it gently. It calmed, puffing a blast of hot air out through its huge nostrils. Its neck was tacky and its mane was dry and rough. It was so warm it was like holding a mug of hot tea. Ares scratched its forehead and breathed its dirty, steaming scent and felt the slow passage of its breath and blood under his palm. He breathed in the same rhythm. He looked into the beast's large, trusting eyes. 

_ The things we make you do. You weren't born for this. _

Two spikes of suppressed frustration barbed Ares' back. He turned and saw movement through the opening of the general’s tent. He gave the horse a final pat and walked over to it, slipping inside so the tent door flapped as if a small breeze had clipped it. The general was a short man, but stocky and muscled, with thick, black hair tumbling about his shoulders and a well-kept black beard trimmed close to his chin. He was leaning his palms on a large table strewn with maps and correspondence. His captain, a medium-height, medium-build, medium-temperament man with a sun-baked face marking the line of his helmet, stood across the table, running his calloused hand into his braids. The sun sieved through the tent fabric and gave them both a soft, sepia tinge. They were both still in full uniform, setting an example.

Ares had entered as the captain was mid-sentence. “Perhaps, if we returned in the winter, we could siege?”

The general kept looking at the confusion of colliding and intersecting lines and borders where the maps jumbled together. He was holding himself tensely, as if, if he relaxed, he might fall to pieces. His anger had a particularly peppery taste, and it was chewy. He started to reply a couple of times, trying to find a brave response that didn’t drag him back to these accursed, impregnable walls. 

Ares took another step in and spoke levelly, just a breeze brushing across the table. “It’s over. We’ll head out in the morning. Winter is not a time for war.”

He saw the general’s shoulders smooth a little. “It’s over, Alecto. We’ll head home and give the men their winter where it belongs. Be ready to leave in the morning.”

The captain’s anger was more like the fizz on rotting fruit starting to ferment. “But… after all this…”

Ares turned to him, pressing a little firmness into his voice, but also trying to soften it. “A siege tests your endurance as much as theirs. Enough is enough.”

The captain stopped himself protesting. He looked with a flash of understanding at his commander. “Yes, Sir.” 

He inclined his head and swept from the tent to give the order, his sour scent of exhaustion and the tail end of an infection buffeting Ares as he passed. Ares looked at the general’s hunched shoulders and moved as if to speak again, as if to say something that would give any courage in this damn depressing petering out of this long, inglorious campaign. Nothing came to him. 

Ares sighed and looked away. “Get some rest.”

He stepped back outside. 

The sun was setting, the peach and pomegranate light viscous on the moulded bronze littered about the camp, making it look as if it was all being melted back down. A few fires had been lit. Men drew to them like moths, chewing on dates and driving skewers through hunks of meat and poking them into the tips of the flames. It sweetened and smoked the pungent smell in the air. But these were not the campfires Ares wanted. They were functional, shoddily made and brusquely attended. Speechless. Songless. 

He found the bandages and wrapped his chest, looping the binding over his shoulder and under his arm with thoughtless, routine technique. He wandered invisibly through the camp, the change in light failing to bring the change in mood he’d hoped for. He put his hand on a few shoulders, straightened a few arms as they held out weapons in practised poses, tucked a few straying locks out of drooping eyes. He tugged loose the bonds of a captured girl and nudged her in the direction of a route she wouldn’t be spotted on. He reminded an attendant that it was time to distribute the poppy juice to those with the broken limbs and punctured torsos. He knocked a rickety tent peg back into place. Nothing he did brought any cheer. 

He wandered back down the beach. 

The sun was hazed and boiling as it sank into the sea, spilling blood red over the water, seeping into the sand. The sand was raked through with blood, so it and the sea merged in one great, crimson plain, as if Ares was standing on the aorta of a titan. He ambled into the lapping of the sea’s edge, letting it wash over his feet, overheated again in so little time. The ships were moored a way along, jostling black shapes on the red waves. He’d see them home. He'd sail back along the coast and make sure they got the proper welcome, make sure their children ran to hug their knees, and their mothers asked if they’d been eating well enough, and their friends laughed at their scuffed-up faces, and their lovers stole them away from the commotion and reclaimed them as jealously as they’d been missed. 

_ “Come home soon, Golden Boy.”  _

_ “You’ll wait for me, Aph?” _

_ “I always do.” _

_ “You’ll end up fucking the mailman, won’t you?” _

_ “Probably. You’ll ruin at least one princess, won’t you?” _

_ “At least.” _

_ “As long as she isn’t prettier than me.” _

_ “Not possible, Plum Blossom.” _

_ “Give me all the dirty details when you’re back.” _

_ “Yeah?” _

_ “Yeah. Seduce me with them.” _

_ Kissing. Salt on the tongue as a tear sneaked over the lips. Kissing deeper. _

The sun rippled like silk and slipped into the sea. The copper and azure darkness soothed Ares' eyes like aloe. He drew in the fresh, cooling, salt-clean air. The rhythmic rumble and swish of the tide stroked his ears, stroked his whole body. He looked up to the sky. The first few stars flickered to life in a vast, cloudless expanse. The immense, featureless eternity of it weighed on him, compressed his organs and his skull.

_ It just… keeps going... there's no end to it...  _

He blinked and shook his head straight and looked down at his feet under the veil of gossamer water. Something twinkled near them. He stooped and picked up a fan-shaped scallop shell. It had been washed gleaming by the waves, pearly white and streaked with berry pink, the exact size of his palm. Its inner surface was glass-smooth as he slipped his thumb back and forth along its shallow cup. Its outer surface was ridged, inviting a strum like lyre strings. It was hard, but it had a strange delicacy to it, as if it still remembered the soft, vulnerable creature it used to protect. 

_ “Aw, Ares! You got me a present?” _

_ “Yeah, Plum Blossom.” _

_ “Why?” _

_ “Because I’m a damn gentleman, you lucky bitch. Open it.” _

_ Pearls shimmering in candlelight. _

_ “Oh, Honey Bear, you prince.” _

_ “You like them?” _

_ “I love them. I was born in the sea, you know.” _

_ “I do know.” _

_ “Sometimes, when I look at you, I can almost remember it. The way the light poured over me as that huge shell opened.” _

_ “Like a treasure chest.” _

_ “I suppose that makes me a sort of pearl.” _

_ “You are to me.” _

_ “Somebody’s randy.” _

_ “I’m trying to be nice!” _

_ Laughter. “You know what makes pearls so special?” _

_ “Tell me.” _

_ “They are formed when a grain of sand invades the oyster and hurts it. When it feels pain inside itself, it spins a pearl around the pain and turns it into something else. Pearls are beauty born of pain.” _

_ “In that case, I don’t want you to be a pearl.” _

_ “No?” _

_ “I don’t want you to ever hurt for even a second of your life.” _

_ “Protect me then, Honey Bear, be my good, hard shell.” _

_ “Oh, I’m hard alright.” _

_ Laughter. The rustle of sheets. _

The hush of waves. 

Ares looked down at the shell in his palm. He stroked his thumb over it again. An ache flooded his chest and curdled to cold lead. He blew out through his teeth and tossed the shell with a  _ plop  _ back into the water.  He looked listlessly out to the inky horizon. 

He skimmed stones along the sea, hurling them what looked like miles with lazy whips of his powerful arms. A few more stars peeked out and the copper drained out of the darkness, chased away by indigo. 

_ At least it gets properly dark down here, no electricity. _

The sounds of drunkenness and crackling wood drifted from the camp. 

_ Gotta get back, I guess. _

He rolled his shoulders, his wound smarting, turned and stepped out of the sea. He walked a few slow paces. 

He stopped. 

He walked back. 

He fished the shell out of the foam and tucked it into the pouch at his belt.


	2. If You Can't Stand the Heat, Get Out of the Kitchen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ares arrives back home. He greets his children and reconnects with Aphrodite, finally fulfilling months of need for both of them.
> 
> It's a smutty one!

“Aaal-RIGHT! I am going to count to THREE and if one of you doesn’t APOLOGISE on THAT COUNT I am going to one day make you LOSE YOUR VIRGINITY OUTSIDE IN THE SNOW.”

Eros put his fists on his hips and glowered magenta down at Ludus and Pragma, frozen mid-squabble, their little hands still planted on each other’s faces and arms. They blinked up at him.

“What’s virginity?” Pragma gurgled.

“I like snow.” Ludus stated.

Eros looked up at the blue wash of sky in defeat. “My threats are so meaningless to children.”

“I can tell you what virginity is.” Agape droned over the top of her phone.

“Nope!” Eros spun to glare at her. “Everyone, just stop fighting, and stop asking questions, and stop - MANIA, WHAT IS THAT IN YOUR MOUTH?” 

Mania sat squatly under a sunflower, like a red toadstool. She was chewing suspiciously. Eros hurried over and gently tickled under her chin until she squealed in laughter and Eros could hook his little finger into her mouth and fish out the long dandelion leaf stuck between her new teeth. Mania bit him. He squawked and grumbled at her, but kissed her plump cheek and scooped her up, bouncing her in his arms. 

The warmth of the day was waning and the freshness in the air had given the children a second wind. Seven siblings to keep out of the way while Momma Bear cooked. He didn’t mind. He looked around his rainbow motley crew. Agape stretched out on her front in the grass, scrolling on her phone and twisting her long corn-coloured hair around one green finger, looking like maize. Pragma and Ludus settled down to build something out of sticks, hunched in the vegetable patch and getting their clothes covered in streaks of crumbly soil. Philautia joined them and went the extra mile by just smashing dirt between her palms. Storge sat cross-legged among the flowers and quietly read a picture book. Eros smiled at his candyfloss curl at the front of his hair, he’d asked for it that morning to copy his big brother. Philia stood over him, shading him with her wings and interrupting him with sharp questions about the story. They all popped out of the overgrown plant life like sprouting bulbs. Mania drooled on Eros’ shirt. He sighed and pursed his lips.

“You are a little mess machine.” He tutted.

“Dadda.” Mania hiccuped.

“No.” Eros chuckled. “Eros. Can you say Eros?”

“Dad!” Philia piped.

“You’re not helping, Sweet Stuff.” Eros said, blowing a raspberry on Mania’s cheek to piercing giggles.

“No!” Philia squeaked. “Daddy!” 

Eros turned to see her tripping over Storge’s knee and flapping her wings furiously as she ran. She bobbed two feet into the air, then tumbled into a heap of white frills against a pair of large, sandy, strapped feet. 

Eros’ jaw dropped. A stone thunked into his stomach, while his heart whooshed. 

A pair of large hands, like the branches of a stocky tree in the Golden Garden of the Hesperides, wrapped all the way around Philia’s waist and hoisted her up, with a swish and a chirrup.

“How’s my little pal?” A deep, magnetic voice.

_ He’s… He’s home. _

Philia threw her arms around Ares’ neck, almost too short to reach all the way round. His red-flush lids veiled his startling eyes as he squashed her in a huge hug, her layers of crimped skirts scrunching against his glimmering breastplate. The others sprang up raucously and flocked like gulls to a dropped ice cream cone. Ludus, Philautia and Pragma scrambled over each other to swing from his pteruges. Storge trotted to cuddle his hips. Agape discarded her phone in the grass and wrapped slim arms around his bicep. Ares looked like a coat stand that a bunch of eager party guests had thrown their garments all over. He stood sturdy in the onslaught and a lopsided smile spread across his face as he kissed crowns and ruffled hair and cracked little bones in vice-grip, muscular hugs. 

Something tautened in Eros’ gut. Beneath it, there was a hollowness. Beneath that, there was something painfully, fragilely joyful. He felt across the ravine opening inside him to touch it, to bring it to the surface, but it shied away, crouched deeper within the warrens of his heart, like a rabbit with a thorn in its paw. His father towered, shone, casting the children into stark, bloody shadow. He had swept his cloak rakishly across his collar and his hair was a mess, he looked like he’d just crash-landed, turning the shadow of his immense body into a vast crater. 

_ He takes up so much space. I’m basically his size, why does he feel like he takes up so much space? _

Ares shook the kids off and looked to Eros. Their eyes met. They were somewhere between ten feet and a hundred miles apart. 

Mania wriggled and stretched her chubby hands out to Ares. Eros scooped the baby a little more.

“Hey.” Eros said. His mouth was dry.

Ares’ jutting brow furrowed. Eros felt the ground stir beneath him as his father walked to him and looked down with his belladonna gaze, dropping Eros into that crater shadow. 

“That all you got for me?” Ares said quietly.

Eros almost shrank back. Then he spotted it. He couldn’t pinpoint it exactly, but somewhere in his father’s stern expression was his lurking mirth. Eros raised an eyebrow, he felt his lips tug at the corner. “Welcome home, General.”

Ares’ jagged face fractured into a blinding grin. “You know the ranks, I’m demoted to Major here.”

“You’re a major something.”

“Good to see you, Cap.” Ares chuckled and slung an arm around Eros and pulled him in. 

Eros sank longingly into the warm, strong, secure hug. He felt a burden lift from his back and his eyes pricked. Then that knot again, that ravine. He felt himself tense in his father’s grasp. He returned the hug a little hesitantly and patted Ares on the back. Mania snuffled between them. Ares smelled faintly of honey and willow. 

_ Mortal medicine. So, you’re wounded.  _

They pulled apart and Ares stroked Mania’s head, fitting delicately into his huge, leonine paw. He gave Eros a strange look, somewhere between pushing and supplicating. 

“Where’s your ma?”

Eros’ jaw set. His chest puffed out, as if he was morphing into a shield. Did this guy have any idea how much she missed him while he was away? How much she worried? Eros heard her padding about the house at night, uncomfortable in the empty bed. He saw her eyes get sharper and her hands get restless, watching like a fox for any sudden movement. She got more insecure, more jealous, more cunning, all her old patterns of self-preservation reforming without his protection and his affection and his reassurance. Eros knew his mother better than she thought. He knew that it was all an act when she pouted and simpered and told him she just couldn’t bear something. The woman was born out of the wrath of the titans, she could bear anything. But she knew that acting helpless, while staying armed to the teeth, kept her safe. Kept them all safe. She couldn’t even drop the act for her Baby Bear. Only Ares, this utterly disastrous man, only he saw her real vulnerability. Only he knew how to care for it. Not even Eros knew and it killed him. And then Ares would go and Eros would be left with a disassembled jigsaw puzzle that he couldn’t quite figure out how to put back together. He’d do his best, for months. Then in would wander this hurricane in a tank top and bang his fist on the table and all the pieces would just bounce into place. He wasn’t there to see them jagged. He didn’t seem to mind that he’d jumble them all up again next time he swept out of the door. Momma was in the house, right now, about to be all rearranged again, and he hadn’t even sent a note.

Eros stuck out his lower lip with a warning look at Ares. “Kitchen.” He said reluctantly. 

Ares looked past him to the house and the hope and the eagerness and the nervousness that passed across his face battered against Eros' resistance. 

_ Wow. He looks younger than me.  _

And then the wave hit, pulsing from his father like the scent of fried sugar and dark chocolate sauce from a churro stand. Desire. No. More than that. Adoration. Repentance. Fear. Need. Intense need. Love. Desperate love. 

_ Uuuuugh. Fine. Big softy. _

Eros finally let himself smile, really smile, and rolled to the side to let Ares pass.

_ Go put your jigsaw back together, you big lug. _

“Can you give us some space?” Ares asked with surprising gentleness.

“Yes, please.” Eros smirked.

Ares shot him an amused glance and cuffed his shoulder as he strode past him to the door. Eros watched him pause. He smoothed his hair and rubbed the back of his neck and flexed his hands. He stooped and shrank under the heavy, jostling fringe of blue wisteria, consciously slotting back into place. For a brief moment, Eros saw his father as a young man, coming to call on a pretty girl he’d taken a shine to, trying to look cool, trying to keep his pulse steady, maybe with flowers or chocolates. Actually, knowing him, probably not. Probably tickets to an underground drag race or something, and not the fun kind with kick-ass queens - the dumb, loud, grubby kind with cars. 

_ Do you even get tickets to a drag race? Or do you just, sort of, show up? Huh. Anyway… _

Eros shook his head and pulled himself away.

“OK, scamps!” He announced enthusiastically to the flock of children. “Who wants to go get cupcakes from the store?”

The children had all been staring after Ares and drifting towards him to gather back around his feet. Eros saw them all absorb this second option and war with themselves.

“We can bring some back for Daddy as a special surprise.”

That did it. He herded them away, jabbering and hooting and bustling around his legs, like a gaggle of geese.

“Wait, I need my phone.”

“Can I go to the bathroom?”

“No.”

“Can I have a chocolate one?”

“I want a chocolate one!”

“Don’t copy!”

“I’ll carry Daddy’s!”

“No, I will!”

“Can I pleeease go to the bathroom?”

“Seriously though, what is virginity?”

The babble receded into the distance. 

Ares let his eyes rove over the dripping buttercream frosting of wisteria. He closed his eyes and breathed the fresh, sugared scent. He tilted his face up and the petals kissed the end of his nose. He let his breath out steadily and rolled his shoulders. He checked the cloak was still covering his wound. He turned the handle, and opened the door.

She appeared immediately. 

She was leaning with her back to him over the large kitchen table, her hair piled onto her head and pinned with a sparkling butterfly clip. Her elegant neck curved and a tantalising roll went through her round shoulder and down her back as she sliced rhythmically, halving figs. A pile of them lay surrendered and split at her side, their tender, pink cores gleaming juicy in the citrine light from the window. The knife squelched and clicked. She was wearing a black mini skirt that cupped her ass with the loving attention of a sculptor to his masterpiece. She had tied her white t-shirt up into a crop top, the thinnest film of summer sweat winking on her lavender lower back. She was barefoot, drawing her long legs into a single brushstroke that swept daintily to the ground. There were shreds of vine leaves peppering the tiled floor around her toes. Even standing still, she was full of that flowing, harmonious motion that hypnotised him every time he so much as glanced at her. He drew in the scents of fruit and olive oil and steaming rice, cinnamon and mint and pepper, and the way her perfume toppled to her own fragrance at the end of the day. He felt his heart swell, so much it pressed his stomach and behind his eyes, so much it weighed his tongue down. He swallowed and let the door swing shut behind him.

The heavy clunk started Aphrodite out of her idle pondering. Her train of thought scampered away and she whirled around with a flicker of irritation. The irritation halted. It fled. Her skin fizzed. Her heart somersaulted. The knife clanged to the floor as she clapped her hands to her mouth. 

He took a soft step into the room, the light from the window veiling him with gossamer, tinting him a brighter, sunnier shade of stunning gold and flaring on his bronze armour. For a moment she knew how it felt to be a mortal having a vision. Then he took another step, and his hair was tousled and half flattened where he’d tried to smooth it, and one hip was tilting and one shoulder falling, and his hands were fidgeting, and his mouth was soft and lopsided, and his eyes were shy. 

And he was her Ares.

“Honey Bear!” 

It came out in a sob. She launched herself forward and her body rushed ecstatically as he caught her in his embrace, like stepping into the desert heat at dawn. He enclosed her in it, smothered her in it, lifted her off the ground and crushed her to him and burrowed his face into her neck. He heaved out a long breath into her skin and she felt his arms and shoulders relax and reform to take her shape, like memory foam. His breastplate infuriated her, barring her from his broad, beautiful torso. She pressed her lips to the cotton of his hair and breathed in the scents of seawater and vinegar rinse and smoke and his distinctive masculine malt. His scent always made her hungry.

“Why didn’t you warn me you were coming?” She said with a high quaver.

He didn’t answer. He just held her tighter, until her ribs ached with it; a wonderful ache, an ache she had missed brutally. 

They held each other for a long, long moment. A dove cooed outside. The steaming rice whispered faintly. 

When she eased herself away she heard a small grumble escape him and he pawed at her hips, his eyes dozy and pleading. It elated her.

She giggled and squeezed his arms, they felt wonderful in the curl of her grip. “Come on, Cowboy, I bet you haven’t eaten or drunk anything, we need to get you settled.” 

She moved to the counter top. He hooked his fingers on the hem of her skirt and bobbed along behind her like a balloon she had tied on the end of a string. She reached up to the cupboard for a cup and he caught her hand and pulled it to his lips. His other arm slithered around her waist and he tickled her just below her belly button. His fingers sneaked under the band of her skirt. He turned her hand in his and nicked the inside of her wrist with his teeth.

She rippled. “Ares…” She smiled in reproach. “Ares, don’t be a bad boy.”

“I am a bad boy.” He husked, his lips moving to the back of her head, his words muffled in her hair. “Can’t be helped.” 

He stroked his fingertips from her hand down her arm and to her shoulder, then round the blade to scoop her breast. He squeezed softly, his thumb finding the nipple and circling, his other hand massaging low on her belly. He ducked his lips to her ear and nibbled it. His touch was like stinging nettles, the lightest brush shot sensation through her body. She felt her flesh coming back to life, reawakening to him, startlingly sensitive. His breastplate rubbed her back, holding the heat of the day. His leg cocked to graze the outside of her thigh with the inside of his. The leather of his pteruges tapped her ass and behind it she could feel him rising into the dip between her cheeks.

“Ares…” She sighed, her raised hand floating round to the nape of his neck. “Sunbeam, the kids are just outside.”

“Eros took them out.”

“You really should sit and drink something and… Oh…”

His mouth glided down her throat and she shuddered. Sweat beaded on her back against the bronze.

“It can wait.” He breathed gruffly. “Everything can wait. Fuck, I’ve missed you.” 

He dashed the hand under her waistband to her ass, gave it one hard grasp, then slid his fingers to the dimple in the centre and down along it, rippling a tease through her abdomen. He landed on her gusset and started to stroke in tight, light circles. She responded instantly, her breath catching, her pulse quickening, her knees unlocking. She pushed her ass out to drag his fingers along her clit.

“Oh Fates, Honey, I’ve missed your touch so much.”

He sighed low against her. “You’re already so wet. Fucking weeks at sea, it may as well have been the driest desert with how fucking wet you are.”

“I hate how easy it is for you to turn me on.” Aphrodite chuckled, grinding back against his cock and delighting in its press through his tunic.

Ares made a thick sound in his throat. “Yeah, ditto.”

He slipped his hand under her t-shirt and tugged the lace of her bra down and plucked her nipple hazelnut-hard between finger and thumb. He curved his hand to the shape of her undercarriage and rocked it. He lapped at the maddeningly ticklish spot where her neck met her shoulder. The touch of his hands and his tongue and his hardening cock sent four separate quivers through Aphrodite that collided heavily in her centre. The shock made her moan high.

“Fuck, yeah, that sound.” Ares groaned helplessly. 

He bit into her flesh, casting another moan out of her. He rolled her nipple like marzipan and his fingers stole under her panties. His touch on her swelling, tender clit set a firework off inside her. He stirred and stroked, he worked her seam with the heel of his hand. She raked her fingers backward into his hair and steadied herself on the counter top with the other hand. Her knuckles whitened as she struggled to control the torrent of desire. 

“Your body feels so perfect, Aph.” Ares whispered to her, his tongue dancing just below the hollow of her jaw as he massaged around her waist and the underside of her breast. “It’s so soft and firm and the shape fits in my hands like it was made for me.”

“Maybe it was.” She sighed through a shuddering breath. “I’m sure yours was made for me. It’s only fair the Goddess of Sex should rule the prettiest, hungriest cock on Olympus.”

He made a satisfying, musical sound between a groan and a whimper and pressed her clit, so the pleasure daggered her and another flow trickled into his palm. “Mmm, you do rule it.” He murmured. “And it is hungry.”

“Prove it.” She panted. “Fuck me.”

“Not like this.” He kissed her hair. “Turn around.” 

He spun her by her hips and lifted her effortlessly to sit on the counter, pushed her knees apart and then closed them again to cage him at the small of his back. He wrapped her in his arms and plunged into a kiss that erupted across her body. She felt like a river smashing through a dam, she gushed into him and the relief and rapture took her beyond flesh and bone and form. Their lips sealed together and their tongues tangoed, almost violent, their teeth bumping together with their force. She clutched the back of his neck to pull him in and clamped him between her thighs, her clit aching with the loss of his touch, but her back tingling at the tightness of his hold. He tasted of bay leaf. She sucked on his lower lip and he slinked and nipped the corner of her mouth.

“Do you think of me when you’re away?” She crooned, curling a lock of his hair around her finger and giving it a little, menacing tug.

“Yes.” He huffed. “Obsessively.” 

That’s how Mania had been born. He’d realised, lost in thought on his slow trek home, each of their children had been conceived on a return and each had reflected the particular way he had missed her. 

Eros, Desire, in their earliest years, when everything was a pink, happy haze of sex and sensuality. It had been a short absence, little more than a skirmish, but it was the first time he’d been more than a few days without her fucking him and the need for it had been all-consuming. 

Agape, Charity, after a rough battle on rough terrain that had fallen apart and quickly become every man for himself. How he’d ached for her kindness. 

Storge, Family, when their brood was young and growing and he’d discovered how much he liked being Dad, how much he wanted to be back with his babies. 

Philia, Friendship, after their longest absence, years, when after enough agonising time it wasn’t even her touch that mattered anymore. He’d just needed her with him, to feel that bond, that connection, to be understood without having to speak, to move in continuous synchronicity, as if attached by a thread. 

Ludus, Playfulness, once their house was full of children and time alone was stolen and sneaky and they had refound their days of fucking in closets and other people’s bedrooms at parties, of trying not to laugh too loud and keeping their eyes wilfully averted as they felt each other up under dinner tables. 

Pragma, Practicality, the night she had refused to marry him, after he had wanted her so much in his absence he hadn’t even played away, and she had pulled him into a pool with four of her nymphs and drowned him in wild lust to remind him that they weren't the marriage type. But she’d still called him “husband” as she came, and it had flooded him with joy. 

Philautia, Self, after a severe injury, one that had taken the Winter to recover from. She’d been patient and attentive and their sex became careful and slow to tend to his knitting insides. 

And Mania, Obsession. Too many absences. Too much frustration and hunger and thwarted desire. A raging argument before he left that had boiled in his gut for weeks before he came storming back and took her hard and rough against the car bonnet half way through their drive to clear the air, while she slapped and clawed and bit him like a wildcat. The image of her flashed vividly into his mind, sprawled back on the dazzling metal, glistening with sweat, her hair tangled and her clothes torn. 

He moaned and kissed her deeper, dug his fingernails into the fat padding her spine. What would it be if she conceived this time? He’d missed her bitterly these past months, it had carved out his insides with a cold knife. He felt the scars still as he grasped her and they yawned in his stomach and his heart.

“I need to be inside you.” He murmured desperately against her lips. She was too far from him, she was slipping away. The distance between them was cavernous. He clutched her anxiously.

His plea spiralled through Aphrodite and she felt herself unfurling for him. She kissed him feverishly, dining on the bay leaf on his tongue. She leaned back on her hands and spread her legs, arching her back to draw his eye over her curves and into the shadow beneath her high hem. 

She fixed him with a sultry, daring look. “So, what are you waiting for?”

“Fuck, you’re so... Mmmph...” He lost his words in a sweetly agonised sound in his throat.

He crumpled and sank down and wrenched up her skirt, hooked her panties with his fingers and pulled them down hard. She gasped and laughed and wriggled to kick them off around him as he dove into the V of her legs and lashed her with his tongue. Flame rushed her clit. She gasped and thrust forward into his mouth as he flashed and flickered his tongue on her, flaying her with heat and pleasure. He teased her open and slid one finger inside her, curling it softly to send pulses out from her core that dissipated in her flesh and left her prickling.

“Oh, Ares. Ares, yes. Yes, Honey…”

She murmured breathlessly and chased his tongue with slithers of her hips, her scent and her taste and her voice and her motion taking him over in tidal waves. He was so hard, so damn fucking hard. But he wanted her more than ready. He didn’t just want no resistance, he wanted to be wanted, he wanted to be yearned for, the way he was yearning, the way it was gnawing his bone marrow. He wanted her so wet he slid into her like she was melting, he wanted her so hot it scalded, he wanted her wild and losing all sense.

The soft insistence of his tongue was pleasure at its perfection. Sometimes when he teased her with his fingers or thrust inside her, his largeness and callous edge nudged pain into the mix. It was a good pain, a pain that excited and dared her, but this… Oh, this… This was a sonnet, this was spun gold, this was a lagoon in moonlight. It was exquisite and artful and sensual. He had begun gluttonous, but as she moaned and relaxed to press to his lips, he calmed and became coaxing, caring, connoisseurial. His tongue snaked into the complex of her flesh and nerves, unfolding her like origami. His finger worked in rhythm with it, knotting her inside with need. His eyes were dreamily closed and she gazed at how he performed with such devotion, such attention. It made him even sexier. The blush of red across his sunflower face glowed warm. Tantalising, rippling, tumbling pleasure pulsed throughout her body from where his tongue explored. She felt her legs parting wider and trembling, her hips scooping, her skin smouldering, her clothes sticking to her. Her wetness swirled with the wetness of his mouth and she felt like her whole being was trickling with want and joy.

Except her core. Her core was bereft and aching.

"Ares…" She breathed, trembling. "Fuck me."

Ares took the longest route around her to withdraw his tongue. He kept his eyes on her pussy. "Tell me you want it." It was almost more of a plea than a demand, soft and urgent. "Tell me you want me."

The urgency in his tone spurred her lust. She spoke in a coursing murmur. "I want you. Ares. Sunbeam. My darling favourite. My consort. My prince. My sweet servant. I am a woman who is worshipped for wanting and all I want right now, forever, is your big, beautiful cock moving inside me. Fuck me, my traveller, come home." She sighed with desire and cast her head back as the magnetism of his nearness thrummed up her nervous system.

She heard his breath catch, heard the relief and the greed in it. She felt the hot, slippery head of his cock bump her gates. She closed her eyes and bit her lip in anticipation, her fists clenching and her pulse halting. 

_ Now. I want this so badly. Now, now, now...  _ "Oooooh!"

He entered her in one long, smooth slide and stilled for a long moment as the matrix of sensation and emotion at the depth of their connection sparked and spread and whirred into life, remapping their thoughts and senses. Aphrodite took a deep, gasping breath, fuelling the fire in her. She dropped her head back down to meet Ares' eyes. Warmth pooled in her heart. He was gazing at her with intensity, his brow crinkled and his mouth a little open as he hefted his breath in and out. She traced her fingertips around his throat and his scalp and he sighed and collapsed forward. As he kissed her, he thrust into her and her blood rushed around his mouth and his cock. She drew him in and crossed her ankles to lock him there and threw herself into the wonderful relief of kissing him again after all this time, kissing and kissing and kissing. 

They found a rhythm with each other, rocking in small movements to keep him deep and close, twisting a little to pepper-grind spice into the sensation pumping through them. He ran his hands up her back, round her waist, over her thighs and breasts. He rubbed her nipples and her clit and she gasped and quivered, the aching ecstasy spiking in her flesh.

Her quiver taunted him. Her sighs, her moans, her clasp on the back of his neck. He needed this, he needed to feel her desire. This perfect enchantress, whose whole being had been shaped by love, like the continents by tectonic plates, wrenched apart and reformed by monumental, primal powers. Just for a moment, he needed that all for himself. He needed to be the thing she wanted most in the world. Because if Aphrodite wanted you, she claimed you, she owned you. You became her treasure, her ward, the sole object of her possessive, predatory focus. It was so easy to belong to her, he just wanted things to feel easy again. 

_ Want me, Aphrodite, take me. _

He raked his fingers into her hair, pinging the clip away to clatter on the side and releasing a bursting scent of lavender and orange blossom that dizzied and delighted him. He gathered her locks and pulled them to stretch her neck. He sank his teeth and his tongue to it, gulping down her shivers and ploughing his cock into her, moaning at her moan, clutching at her clutch. 

"This feel good, Soda Pop?" He loved the sound of his voice calling her that silly name, that homey nonsense in the middle of this fantastic heat. 

Aphrodite mewed in response and it both satisfied and whipped up his hunger. "This feels so good, Honey Bear, this feels so good." 

"You want more?"

"I want more, I want it desperately. Ares, I might die if you stop fucking me."

"Gods, you're beautiful when you're horny."

She cackled and pinched his ear and he beamed and kissed her ravenously.

His breastplate clouded with the humidity between them. They moved faster, rougher, panting, their backs dripping with thin threads of sweat. Ares braced his hands either side of her hips and wrenched his whole body into fucking her, his muscles hardening, his insides drawing taut. Aphrodite broke their kiss to rasp for air, tendrils of her hair loose around her face as she looked at him with feral want. She leaned back on her palms and arched her back. Her knees floated up to open herself wider, taunting him to fill her, to dive deep. Ares' pupils yawned as he drank in her body, the mound of her breasts and the tightness of her rolling abdomen and the cascade of her hair as she drew him into her. The way she moved, like a charmed cobra, it was mesmerising, it was his favourite of all his weaknesses. 

"Aphrodite, you drive me crazy."

"Good, go with it."

He sped up and Aphrodite shimmied at the surge up her core. Ares had this special quality; he was as controlled in speed as he was in slowness. Most lovers lost form in the final stretch, jerking in and out like a jackhammer, throwing away all the ways to move in her except the basic back and forth. But Ares still rolled, still twisted, still rained kisses and nips and sucks around her mouth and cheeks and throat and breasts, still carefully, purposefully stimulated every part of her. 

The wet smack of flesh mingled with their moans, his cock impaling her with desire and heat, sending shock waves through her body every time it plunged forward. The waves began to come faster than they could recede, overlapping and churning in her flesh, vibrating in her tendons. Her legs shook, the insides of her thighs burning on his armour. She closed her eyes and saw stars popping in the darkness.

"Yes! Yes, Ares! Like that! Just like that!"

"Whatever you want, Beautiful, you know I'll give you anything you want." His voice was hoarse, worshipful, it scorched her shoulder as he sucked on it.

"Give me this. Always. Ares. Don't stop."

"Keep talking."

He clasped her to him and buried his face in her hair and barrelled into her, his cock flooding with pleasure that cantered out across his flesh and muscle. He held her close, her undulations as she moved around his thrusts washing him away on a coursing current. Somewhere inside him he could still feel the scars from their separation, could still feel a chasm between them. He needed to flood that too, to fill it up, to turn it into an ocean of heat and certainty. 

_ Please, keep talking. _

"No one feels like you do, Honey Bear." She whispered into the grind of his body. "You take me to places I can't get to any other way. Imagine that for a love goddess."

She was so hot, so deliciously hot.

"And nothing makes me feel more like a love goddess than sex with you. Ares, when we fuck, they feel it at the centre of the earth."

He was close, he was almost tearing with the strain of waiting for her.

"I'm so close, Honey. I'm at the edge. I want to come so badly. I want to come screaming, on your hard, hungry, unmatched cock."

He couldn't breathe. 

"Make war on me."

That shocked him. He choked and broke. He was released with a gulping, guttural cry and the pleasure punched through his body in hard stabs.

She felt his cock pulse and then it was like kerosene being pumped onto a flame. She burst with heat, it roared across her skin and gripped her insides. She wailed in delight, as she was consumed in fire, whipping forward to cling to the cape at his collar for dear life.

"Oh Gods! Oh My Gods!"

"Fuck! Oh! Fuck! Yeah!"

They kissed frantically, breaking to curse and gasp, then kissing again with even more ferocity, devouring each other. 

“Ares, Oh, Mmm, that was…”

“Oh, Fuck, Beautiful, that was…”

“Yeah…”

“Shit, I needed that. I needed you. I need you.”

They kept kissing as they came back to earth. It grew gentle, tender. Ares felt all his muscles turn to oil and he puddled in her arms. She wrapped him in her legs to hold him up and hugged his neck. They rode their kiss from the rapids of their pleasure to the still pool of their relief. 

They kept kissing. 

_ Maybe all the realms will forget about us.  _ Ares hoped.  _ Maybe we'll drift away somewhere where it's just us and we're always like this. _

A sharp rat-a-tat on the door and a muffled voice. "Is it safe to come in yet? Everyone's hungry!"

_ No such luck.  _

Aphrodite pulled back, smiling. "Your babies are home."

Ares dropped his brow to hers and stuck out his lower lip. "Is it too drastic if I disown them, so we can do this a little longer?" 

"Yes."

He grumbled unintelligibly.

She giggled and stroked his hair and pecked his lips once more. She pushed him back, his body reluctant but too lazy to resist properly. She slipped onto her feet, wriggled back into her panties and straightened herself out. He did the same, watching her with a sulk still on his mouth.

"Let loose the horde!" Aphrodite called.

The door burst open and the rainbow swarm filled the kitchen with ringing clamour that prodded Ares right in the ear canal. The kids pranced about him, tugging on his exhausted limbs.

"Daddy, we got cupcakes!"

"Daddy, I carried them for you, look!"

"Daddy, Eros says I'm the best behaved, so look I'm being really good."

"Daddy, I learned how to do a handstand!" A crash. "Almost!"

Their voices tumbled to him, as if through the echo of a great bell, contorted and lost in the overlaid resounding hum. He glanced at Aphrodite and saw her warm look tinted with wariness as she noticed his lack of response to his children. He tried to hear them, to laugh and tussle and say something approving or funny or authoritative. He kept just… not doing anything.

"Uh…"  _ Come on, just pick one and say something and the rest will follow.  _ He looked vaguely at Ludus, in a post-handstand heap. "Well done." He winced internally at how dull his voice sounded. 

He felt a soft touch on his hand and looked to see Aphrodite searching his face with concern. 

He cleared his throat. "I'm going to take a shower." 

He ducked and kissed her neck, with a hint of teeth, a hint of possessiveness. He tugged himself loose and strode upstairs.

Eros watched him go, his great, hulking back ill-fitting with the quaint, chic surroundings. Eros looked to his mother and frowned at the confusion on her face. That was a rare expression. Her hair was comically tangled and her t-shirt was rumpled. She put a hand to her neck and the spectre of his father's mouth. 

"You know," Eros cracked a bright, teasing smile. "There's literally nothing worse than seeing your parents with sex hair."

Aphrodite pursed her lips and shot him a look of amused reproach. "I can think of one thing." She poked his arm. "Having your kid comment on it."

Eros chortled and wrinkled his nose at her. She stroked his arm and went back to the figs.

"Momma." Pragma's snub nose poked over the kitchen table. "What's virginity?" 

Aphrodite hiccuped in surprise then burst into cascading laughter. It harmonised with the chorus of delight in her body. 

They were together again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know there's a lot of discussion about whether all the kids are biologically Ares'. I really love the idea that they aren't, it adds another lovely element of this family being non-traditional and super loving. Plus, Ludus looks hella like a certain mailman. But meh, I had an idea, so I went with it.


	3. Domestic Gods

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aphrodite uses magic to deal with Ares' wound. Ares struggles to feel calm in the change of space.
> 
> [CW: Wound description, blood, description of anxiety, anxiety attack. Also, there's an off-screen goat death.]

_ Are there more kids than I remember?  _

Ares scrubbed clouds of bubbles into his hair and chewed on the inside of his cheek. The hiss and drum of the shower and the cauldron of perfumed steam had been a welcome relief from the din, resetting his overwhelmed senses. But the reset had wiped too much data and now there was an awful lot of space left for him to fill with idle thinking. 

Idle thinking could be a real bastard sometimes. 

_ It just really feels like there's more.  _

He counted them off on his fingers, as he puffed a bubble off the end of his nose. 

_ No, that checks out. Just louder than usual then. Huh. I usually like the noise. No one really wants quiet after war, they think they do, but…  _

“MIGHTY SAVIOUR OF CITIES.”

_ Fuck _ . 

A priest was praying. 

_ Get lost, will ya?  _

“THANK YOU FOR LENDING YOUR STRENGTH TO OUR WALLS.”

_ Wasn't on your side, Pal, but sure.  _

“PLEASE ACCEPT THIS OFFERING.”

_ I swear, if this is another fucking goat…  _

“THIS FINE GOAT, SLAUGHTERED IN YOUR HONOUR.”

_ Yep, there it is. No dice today, Bud. _

Ares turned the water pressure up to drown out the ceremony. Another whisper came to him through the deluge. 

_ “Make war on me.” _

He clenched against a shudder, a strange chill even in the high heat of the shower. 

_ Why’d you say that, Babe?  _

He made war while he was away, he made love at home. Love and babies and scrambled eggs. He took the kids to after-school clubs, and he had tea with his Ma, and he gave his sister piggy-back rides, and he got drunk and played video games with Hermes, and he tired himself out training with Athena, and he lay in bed with the most beautiful woman in existence as she turned his body into a chemistry lab. OK, he was a contrary, argumentative son of a bitch, but he didn't make war. Everyone needed downtime. No one asked Hermes to deliver them a package first class, or Hades to fuck them to death, did they? Actually, he was pretty sure he'd heard Hermes use that line in a bar. But it hadn't worked, so the point still stood. 

He dunked his scalp under the stream and it soaked and singed his face. He screwed his eyes shut. 

The problem with Aphrodite was she didn't understand having a job you didn't want to do 24/7. She lived and breathed her work. Obviously. Who wouldn't in that sector? Stick her in a camp full of miserable, sweaty louts for a Summer, see if she thinks it makes good dirty talk then. 

_ Wait, are you mad at Aphrodite? Your Aphrodite? For… what exactly? Stop it. Rinse. Get out of the shower. Get busy.  _

He hurriedly sloughed off the rest of the cloying, crowding bubbles, systematically guiding the intense beat of hot water across his body, pummelling his muscles to dough, remoulding his warrior's shape into… he wasn't sure. 

He turned off the water with a squeak of the tap and stepped across the tiles, slippy with steam. He rubbed the mist from the mirror, leaving fat streaks from his large fingers that blurred his face, as if he was reflected in a pool. For a moment, it didn't look like him. It looked like some other man was glowering at him from the glass. The man looked like he might be about to speak, looked like he wanted to get into it about something. Ares sharply blinked him away and looked down at the sodden bandages around his wound. They were stained ruddy brown from where it had seeped, the yellow of the materials in the mortal realm looked grubby under electric lights. He grimaced and began to peel the wrappings away, a sickening crackling sound coming from the breaking of dried blood and serum. The revealed skin was moist and a pale citrus colour, with a tan line to the rest of his peach-gold shoulders and upper chest. The wound was dry, but it smarted and ached as the painkiller of Aphrodite’s body faded. A red, itchy rim had flared at its edges. He fumbled around in the cabinet over the sink and fished out antiseptic and cotton wool. He grit his teeth and leaned into the vicious sting of the chemical as he dragged it across the gash.

“You’re hurt.”

He snapped up to see Aphrodite standing in the doorway, still a little flushed and dishevelled, and insanely sexy for it. Her expression was anxious and behind it was a flicker of her anger. He swallowed, half nervous of it and half enjoying its taste.

“It’s nothing.” He shrugged, which was a mistake. Pain shot through the wound and he grunted.

“It doesn’t look like nothing.” She said firmly. 

She strode into the bathroom and took his shoulders and manoeuvred him to face her. Her dagger-point fingernails dug sternly into his muscle. He avoided her eye.

Aphrodite steeled her face to keep from visibly reacting to the wound. It was angry and deep, it glared red at her like the half-open eye of some beast Hades would adopt. The bright, white light glancing off the tiles made it gleam, made it look fresh. It was exactly eye level with her, boring into her with its demonic stare. She pulled her gaze back up to his and cocked her head to catch his evasive eyes. The burn in them was dull, he was more embers than sparks. 

“Fates, Ares, what looks like something to you?”

He clucked his tongue and jutted his jaw. “I’m taking care of it, Babe.”

“You live with a fertility goddess, you ass.”

He opened his mouth to protest, but silenced as she glared at him. She grazed his arms with her fingernails as she ran her hands down to his, took them with a soft squeeze, and led him out of the bathroom into their bedroom. 

She sat him gently on the bed. He let her move him, no struggle, no tease, no pushing her to discipline him or trying to make her laugh. Aphrodite’s stomach sank. She felt like nothing more than a warm breeze blowing tumbleweed along a dusty highway. It was a nasty gash. Was it hurting him badly? Was it infected? Was he sick? Her lips tightened at the realisation she hadn’t noticed anything in the kitchen, no scent under his musk or scarlet under his cloak or tension under his powerful movements. She’d just been so happy to see him. She’d let herself skip along the surface. Let herself get carried away at her family’s expense. Again. 

His thumbs ran over her hands.

“It’s really not so bad.” He said reassuringly.

“Quiet.” She said irritably. 

She released his hands, went to her dressing table and returned with a small jar of dark gold liquid, the colour of candlelight on mahogany and with the same smiling glow.

“You should save that for when the kids get into scraps.” Ares murmured.

“My biggest kid has got into a scrap.” Aphrodite retorted. “Remember, this isn’t just a cuts and bruises remedy. This is a special sort of honey. The Melissae made it for the Six Traitors, got them out of some nasty near misses. Then they started making it for me, in exchange for better suitors than your idiot father.” She slid behind him on the bed and popped the lid off the jar. A rich scent bloomed into the room, sticky on their tongues. “Of course, all that was before you were born, Toy Boy.”

Ares puffed a chuckle out through his nose. Aphrodite combed her fingers into his damp, knotted curls and tugged. He rocked backwards with a sigh and she guided him to lie back with his head in her lap. She frowned as he winced, the wound burned from flexing his chest. She stroked his brow. His eyes fluttered closed and he breathed deep, letting her touch soothe him. 

Aphrodite took a breath and held it. She savoured the scent of the honey. She rolled her shoulders and released herself, letting everything crowding her mind and heart go, except for that dark sweetness and the brushstrokes of low light on Ares’ naked, beautiful body.  _ Her  _ body. Hers to enjoy and play with and use, hers to shelter in, hers to miss, hers to care for. She dipped her fingers into the honey and it glimmered on them like molten glass. She hovered her hand close over the wound and drizzled the honey along it, the amber trail glazing the crimson cut sunset orange. 

She breathed again. Wildflowers. She could smell wildflowers. And earth. Ares’ abs rose and fell with drowsy breathing. She could hear the swish of fabric on grass in the same rhythm. Ares folded his hands onto his stomach and the bed creaked a little, as he settled his warm weight into her lap. His hair dripped onto her thighs. She could hear the trickle of a stream. He sighed low. She could hear the hum of bees. She dipped her fingers into the pot and drizzled the wound again. She closed her eyes.

She was in a meadow. 

A bright, aquamarine sky, iced with marzipan clouds, soared and vanished behind an emerald hill topped with a modest marble temple, the cream columns wound with vines. Sprays of pink and purple sprouted from the grass at her feet. Down the rise on which she stood, a stream flowed in the dip of the valley. It was scarlet, flashing with sickly vibrancy in the sunlight, running with blood. Her stomach writhed.

She heard the swish of fabric again. She turned and saw a tree a few paces away, with broad, lush, green leaves and clusters of white flowers swirling with bees. Sat against its trunk was a nymph, honey-gold in her skin and her sweep of hair and her large eyes, in everything but for the lilac dress that draped loosely over her form, and the braided crown of wildflowers on her head, out of which her pointed ears poked. She was reading and seemed oblivious to Aphrodite’s presence.

Aphrodite cleared her throat pointedly.

“Hang on.” Said the nymph. “This is the good bit. There’s smut.”

“I will not hang on!” Aphrodite put her fists on her hips and glared. “This is more important!”

The nymph flicked her eyes up over the top of the paper. “Can’t you get fired for saying something is more important than smut?”

Aphrodite looked like a parakeet that had just had her peanuts stolen. The nymph smiled.

“You continue to find yourself more amusing than anyone else does.” Aphrodite said through her teeth.

The nymph put the papyrus down demurely and shifted from her relaxed position to kneel. She inclined her head. “You’re here about that, I presume.” She said, nodding at the red river.

Aphrodite didn’t look back at it. She didn’t want to see it.

“Who is it?” The nymph asked.

“The War God.” Aphrodite said stiffly.

The nymph did not look surprised. “Zeus’ boy. Always.”

“My boy.” Aphrodite corrected, with a severe edge to her tone.

The nymph inclined her head again. She smiled and patted the patch of grass and forget-me-nots beside her. Aphrodite huffed primly, but strode to her and knelt by her side.

“It’s not good.” The nymph said.

“I know.” Aphrodite said, gritting her teeth harder. “Let’s just get this done.”

She took the nymph’s hand, a little too hard, the way cats nip each other’s ruffs. 

They looked together into the dancing, ruby light of the stream. It was a coursing current, dashing blood up the banks and gobbling up the stones and roots in the riverbed. Aphrodite caught the unpleasant scent of iron in the air. She flicked her tongue, but that only made it worse. She ground her teeth, then forcefully relaxed her jaw. She focused on the nymph’s delicate hand in hers, on the hum of the bees, on the bright colours of the meadow. She had first seen Ares lying among wildflowers, sleepy in the sun, young and foolish and cocky and so wonderfully ready to fall in love. 

The nymph fixed her eyes on the churning water and began to speak musically, a viola strain over the lilting cello notes of the bees. “Leave him. Do not pollute a pure body. Come and nourish the earth. Flowers become honey, so pain becomes strength.”

“He is under my protection.” Aphrodite murmured, her voice harmonising with the nymph’s. “I banish you.”

“Flowers become honey, so pain becomes strength.”

“I claimed him. I banish you.”

The stream surged and sloshed. The inky crimson began to pale, draining from the waters. It seeped in thin, veiny trails up crevices in the soil and tracks in the grass. Ribbons of glistening red rippled along the ground towards the women, as they chanted. The iron scent intensified.

“Flowers become honey, so pain becomes strength.”

“He is mine. I banish you.”

The red ribbons flowed around them, circling them and the tree and spiralling up into the grooves in its bark. The bees hummed louder. The earth darkened with blood, the flowers in the grass and the trees tinted like wine had been spilled over their petals. Aphrodite and the nymph sat in the spreading stain of red like two crocuses, yellow and purple, crowning the meadow. 

“Flowers become honey, so pain becomes strength.”

“He is home. I banish you.”

The bees hummed so loud it nettled Aphrodite’s ears. The stream surged once more and the last pink streaks drained from the water into the earth. The stream sparkled in the sunshine like white crystal. 

For a long moment the earth and the flowers and the tree were weighty and sodden with blood. Droplets pattered from the tips of leaves and twigs overhead. Aphrodite realised her free hand had fallen to the grass, she felt wetness and raised it and saw slick red on her palm. The iron smell was overpowering, greasy in the air and on her skin and in her mouth and nostrils. She clenched her teeth against a wave of disgust. 

The nymph squeezed her other hand. Aphrodite looked at her and saw her knees pressing into the earth in a squelching puddle of blood. There was a pink tip to her hair and her eyes were strange and the colour of sap. 

The bees grew deafening, louder than a buzzsaw.

“Flowers become honey, so pain becomes strength. Flowers become honey, so pain becomes strength. Flowers become honey...”

“Melissa?”

“Hmm?”

The nymph blinked back to awareness. The noise hushed. The meadow turned back to vivid green and the stains on their hands and knees and the puddles in the grass and the dripping down the tree trunk all disappeared. Only the tip of the nymph’s hair and the flowers in the tree still bloomed ruby. The bees quietened to their hypnotic hum and busied themselves around the blossoms, gathering the fresh substance for a peculiar flavour of honey.

“Would you like a jar from this batch?” The nymph turned to Aphrodite with a breezy smile, gesturing to the little workers overhead, her eyes back to buttercup gold.

Aphrodite wrinkled her nose.

“Suit yourself.” The nymph shrugged and patted Aphrodite's hand. “He should be right as rain now.”

Aphrodite nodded and stood. Her jaw and her brow and her shoulders felt tight. She dusted off her hands; clean as they now were, the shadows in her palms still looked like blood.

“Take care.” The nymph said sincerely, giving her a level look. “Until I see you again.”

“You won’t.” Aphrodite said stiffly.

“You sure?” The nymph smiled out of the corner of her mouth. “He is a bit of a liability.”

“Yes. But if he gets this badly hurt again, I’ll kill him.”

The nymph laughed and the bees hummed louder in an echo of it. She waved and stretched back out against the tree. Aphrodite shut her eyes. She could hear deep breathing in a cavernous chest. She could smell incense and laundry detergent. She could feel warmth in her lap and softness under her seat. 

She opened her eyes.

Ares had turned his face to rest his cheek on her thighs, the tracery of gold through the red flush across his eyes like a cobweb spun by a spider made of sunlight. There was a smear of glistening honey across his chest and the wound had faded to a broad, peach scar. 

Aphrodite pinched Ares’ cheek. He roused and blinked dreamily. He sat up, his hair crinkling where he’d lay. She slid to sit at his side. He looked down at his chest and made a small, surprised sound. He rolled his shoulders tentatively. The flesh felt tender and tight, but the pain was gone. 

He sighed in relief and looked at her gingerly. “Thanks, Aph.”

“Any time.” She patted his thigh. “I wish I was better at healing and didn’t have to rely on communing with those nectar peddlars. Put my practice into other things, I guess.”

He locked her gaze, a flicker of humour on his lips. “I appreciate your stronger suits.”

Aphrodite stuck her tongue out at him. She stroked his hair and abs, as his sleepy gaze wandered around her body. With the aftermath of her climax still lingering, his nakedness wasn’t even enticing. It was just present - a delicate, calming presence, like a butterfly landing on a nearby dandelion, pretty and innocent and filling her with quiet, as she tried not to spook it or miss any of its alluring details. The curtain was drawn and the low light turned him the colour of peeled mango. His skin was warm and smooth. She glided her touch over the familiar contours and rested her lips to his shoulder. She felt his lips on her hair. His hand stroked hers on his defined stomach. His broad chest rose in a long breath.

“Ares?”

“Mmm.”

“It makes me so mad when you hide wounds from me.”

“It makes me so mad when you get stuck on small stuff like this.”

She looked up sharply, casting his lips from her hair. His expression was sulky and sardonic.

“Seriously?” She snapped. “Small stuff?” 

Ares rolled his eyes. She felt like she’d just crunched down on a black pepper pod.

“Hey, don’t you give me attitude, Boy.” She clutched his chin and forced him to look at her, her cheeks heating. “It’s my damn right to know if someone harms my property.” 

She saw the colour rise to his face, saw his eyes sparkle a little before going dull again. There it was, the way he responded to her anger, it stirred him, aroused him, made him more himself. 

She clamped her fingers tighter, feeling his jawbone hard, and loosed more anger into her voice. “Who was it that dared attack the God of War? I’ll turn his spunk into mosquito eggs.”

Ares’ pupils bloomed, but he put a gentle hand on her knee and relaxed his face into her grip. “No one attacked me, my harpy. You know I operate in the thick of things, I got hit, it happens.”

Bile rolled in her belly at the memory of the gushing red river. She swallowed it down. “You got more than hit. It looks like someone tried to cut out your heart.”

Ares gave her a soft smile and took her hand and held it to his chest, an inch below the scar. She felt a strong, steady thrum under her fingers.

“They didn’t get near my heart.” He said reassuringly. “My heart is here.” He poked her on the nose. “And there.”

Her temper turned to steam and dissipated. His face was weary and his touch was... Gods, it was everything. She sighed and helplessly gave into the nearness of him. They kissed slowly, their lips pressing and their tongues teasing each other. She slid into his arms, hooking her leg over his lap so he could pull her into the heat of his body. He held her jealously, his fingers closing on the back of her t-shirt, his warmth enveloping her and the rising rhythm of his breathing lifting his chest against her. She wrapped herself around him, she felt like she was keeping him from falling off a precipice. Something about him wasn’t here with her, but if she could hold all of him, everything that he was, close enough, she could bring it back. It felt so good to be pressed against his skin again, damn that armour. 

The honey gummed on her collar bone. She surged into a harder kiss and he gave way like a sheet of paper floating on water. He sank beneath her and his heat rushed her, as his embrace tightened. The bed creaked and the sheets whispered to be pulled around them. He broke her kiss to breathe and she ducked to his scar and began to snack on the trail of sweetness, nibbling down to his nipples. He was so densely muscular that every part of him just screamed to have her sink her teeth in, even when she was trying to be gentle he turned her into a wildcat. He moaned musically and dropped his head back, inviting her teeth, writhing a little underneath her and rekindling her flesh. She snaked her body on him, delighting in the texture of his skin, the lace pattern of scars and fine hair and the ridges and furrows and the wonderful breadth that made her feel like she was nestled on a raft on the lulling ocean. His breath trembled a little and it pulsed through her. His hands kneaded her back and her tension oozed away. She dragged her tongue over the honey and let it flood her senses. Her mouth watered.

He stopped her, his hand firm on her arm.

She raised off him, the curtain shadow of her hair staining his torso like tea. “What is it, Honey Bear?”

“Is that Storge’s pillow?” He asked.

She looked in the direction of his eye and saw the pink, puffed pillow with stars and mice printed on it, next to her own on the bed.  “Yes.”

“Has he been playing in here or something? Because there’s a lot of toys I’m not keen for the kids to find under this bed.”

“No.” Aphrodite chuckled. “You know he gets anxious when you’re away. Sometimes he needs to come in with me to sleep.”

Ares frowned at her and propped himself up on his elbows, making her bob back off his chest, the honey still on her tongue. 

“He’s getting a little old for that, isn’t he?” He gruffed.

Aphrodite prickled, arching an eyebrow and pursing her lips. “So he’s a momma’s boy, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

Ares narrowed his eyes at her. “I am not a momma’s boy. I have a ma who needs me because of the shit she has to deal with in her own house from her own husband.” He stopped himself short. He looked away. 

Silence hung in the close room. It seemed darker than before, perhaps a cloud had passed over the sun behind the curtain. Aphrodite watched his face, but it was too shadowed to read. 

She shrugged off the prickling. She cupped his cheek with one hand and guided him to look back at her. “Storge is a sweet soul who loves his family, and being apart from anyone in it gets to him.” She nudged his chin with her knuckle. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” She kissed his forehead. 

His eyes looked into hers, they were heavy.

“Dinner!” Eros’ call clanged up the stairs.

“Eat something.” Aphrodite said softly, stroking along the ridge of his cheekbone. “You need to get some good home cooking in you.”

He sighed roughly, but turned his face into her caressing touch and kissed her palm.

*

The noise gurgled up to Ares, as he pulled on his sweats and they descended back into the hubbub of the kitchen. Eros was laying a feast onto the huge dining table, as Agape strapped a fidgeting Mania into her high chair. Philia, Pragma and Ludus pulled faces at each other and banged their forks on their plates. Philautia blew spittle bubbles, as Storge tried to get her to hold a spoon. 

“Daddy!”

“Daddy, sit with me!”

“No, with me!”

“Daddy sits at the head of the table.”

“No, that’s Momma’s seat.”

“The table has two heads, silly!”

“Nothing has two heads!”

“Uncle Hades’ dog has three!”

Their piping prattle muddled in Ares’ hearing. Every time he assigned a voice to a child, another one would speak and confuse him again. 

_ What’s going on with you? These are your babies. Talk to them.  _

The only quiet one was Storge, diligently attending to Philautia, who continued to ignore him in favour of her own saliva. He had restyled his hair, copying Eros’ quiff. It had used to be a mop of curls, more like Ares’. Ares had always kind of liked that Storge had his curls. Like Agape had his colour. Wow, Agape was really tall now. A regular little lady. How long had he been gone this time? 

Aphrodite’s hand on his back brought him out of his thoughts.

“Sit down, Sunbeam.” 

Her smile was so stunning. He couldn’t look at it for long or he got dizzy. He pushed the corners of his mouth up and dropped into a seat, an aisle of bustling, paint-splodge kids and flourishing platters between him and Aphrodite. She looked like a queen convening a chaotic court. 

Dinner was stuffed vine leaves. Dates and figs gleamed, rice fluffed, bread tore and sighed rosemary steam. The kids tucked in like gannets, scattering crumbs and shouting at each other around mouthfuls of mashed mince. Aphrodite snipped at them to behave, but they kept making her laugh, so her message was somewhat weakened. Ares bowed his head to his plate and plucked a little dark green parcel. He bit into it. Herbs and sweetness and softness filled his mouth and nose. The warmth of it travelled down his throat and settled comfortingly in his stomach, its essence still luxuriating in his senses. He exhaled slowly and rolled his tongue in his mouth. 

Eros was seated at his elbow, pushing his thumbs into a hunk of bread to split it open. His cheekbones had grown in over the summer, he looked like less of a cherub.

“You make this?” Ares asked quietly.

Eros looked up, his eyes round and rosy, like his mother’s. “Oh.” He smiled. “Team effort. Momma did most of it, I finished it off while you were being a distraction.”

Ares puffed a laugh through his nose. “Not lost your cheek.”

“My charm, you mean.”

Ares snorted and stole a fig off Eros’ plate. 

“Hey!”

Ludus did the same.

“Hey!”

Eros pursed his lips and held his plate aloft as Ludus giggled and swiped for it. “Dad, you’re such a bad influence!”

Ares’ cheek twitched. He shrugged and glanced past Eros’ and Ludus’ tussling arms. Storge was staring at him with enormous, shining eyes. Ares shrank back a little. The boy’s gaze was like purple floodlights, it made Ares feel oddly exposed. There was a downward twist to the corner of Storge’s mouth, a look he only got as a baby after he’d been crying. The image of his little frame curled up against Aphrodite flashed into Ares’ mind, quaking inside the oversized turquoise pyjamas they had got him for his last birthday. Ares had been so sure they would fit. He was always surprised by how small the kid was. 

Ares’ vision pulsed.

Shadows. 

He saw shadows. 

Shadows creeping over his and Aphrodite’s bed and up the walls, like a bloodstain. Shadows with great yawning maws and haunting, hollow, moonglow gazes. He saw Storge’s eyes turning sickening, cough-medicine pink, as he pressed to his mother for a shield from the monsters. He saw him cuddling her, trying to keep her safe. 

_ Someone had to, if Daddy wasn’t here. Where was Daddy? Why did he leave?  _

Ares felt his stomach churn, his breath turned to ice and froze his lungs. The shadows loomed large, great maws opening and long claws reaching. 

_ How could they be safe without Daddy? Why would he let them be in danger like this? _

Ares’ palms sweat. His spine trembled. A horrific gouging feeling in his gut told him he was about to dry heave. 

_ Did Daddy not want to protect them anymore? Did he not love them anymore? _

He forced the nausea down and it burned behind his sternum.

_ Was Momma going to be alone forever? Were they all? _

Ares’ heart banged. 

Wait, no, that was his chair hitting the floor. 

He was standing. 

He was in the kitchen. 

The vision fled.

“Dad?” Eros said carefully. 

Everyone was staring at him. 

Aphrodite stood too, looking taller than she was across the laden table, smoke pluming from a spit-roast. “Ares?”

_ What the…  _

Ares cleared his throat. “I’m tired.” He stumbled to replace the chair and took a few steps back from the table. “Mortal realm... time difference.” 

_ What are you saying? _

Eros and Aphrodite exchanged a look. 

“I’m going to lie down.” Ares said quickly, already walking to the stairs.

“Do you want me to…” Aphrodite started.

“No.” He heard himself speak too coarsely. “Stay with the kids. I just need to sleep.” 

He tore from the room.

_ What the fuck was that?  _

He took the stairs two at a time, rubbing his forehead furiously, dizzy, his mouth dry, his heart hammering so it thudded in his fingertips and his temples and his stomach. 

_ What, I have to deal with everyone’s temper, now I get their fear too? That better not be it. That’s going to be a fucking nightmare with Storge around. He’s scared of fucking everything. Why is he like that? None of the other kids are. Did something happen when he was a baby? Where was I when he was little? _

He couldn’t remember. 

_ For fuck’s sake! _

He slammed into the bedroom and braced his back against the hard wood of the door. It dug into his spine. His heart battered his Adam’s apple. His blood careened around his veins, urging him to lash out, to lose control, to burn himself up. The room felt small. He felt cramped. Trapped. 

_ Oh Gods, Oh Gods, Oh Gods. _

He punched his palm. It hurt. 

_ Don’t punch anything else, they’ll hear it.  _

His ears roared. His breath stung through closing airways. There were spots in front of his eyes.

Panic. 

_ Fuck! _

This was panic.

_ Calm down!  _

He punched his palm again. The force jammed his elbow.

_ Calm the fuck down, you damn fucking deadbeat!  _

He felt sick. The food here was so rich, it clogged his throat. His chest felt tight, like straps and buckles were trying to keep something inside it, something like a battering ram in his rib cage. 

_ Please, calm down. _

He cupped his hands over his mouth and heaved in his breath. One, two, three. Honey. Lavender. Fresh bedding. Aphrodite’s perfume.

_ Please.  _

*

“What’s wrong with Daddy?” Philia asked around a shredded vine leaf.

“Nothing.” Aphrodite said, carefully smoothing her brow. “He’s had a long trip. He’ll be right as rain tomorrow.”

Storge pushed an unopened leaf parcel around his plate with his fork. “He seems upset. Did we do something?”

“Oh.” Aphrodite hurriedly stroked his hair, duck-down soft under her fingers. “No, my ice cream sundae. He’s just grouchy when he’s sleepy.”

Storge smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. Eros caught her eye as she leaned back in her chair. He looked worried. Worse, he looked knowing. She gave him the tiniest shake of her head:  _ Leave it be. For now.  _

Dinner returned to the usual rhythm and then bumbled into the lounge. A dating show flicked on and Eros and Agape squabbled over who the protagonist should pick, the nymph with the freakishly white teeth, or the satyr with the really annoying voice. Storge sat on Eros’ feet and kept switching sides, unable to decide which of his siblings to validate. The others entertained themselves in a variety of messy and loud ways until, one by one, they were tucked into bed. 

When there was only Eros and Aphrodite left, Aphrodite let the quiet steal into her body and pluck the tense cord of worry up her centre that had been winding tighter and tighter since dinner. She glanced towards the stairs. She glanced at the mess in the kitchen. 

_ Keep things going as normal.  _

She started to pile dishes by the sink. Eros followed suit. They worked in silence. When the table was clean, she ran the hot water and reached for the washing-up liquid.

“Momma?”

Eros stepped beside her. His faint scent of cleanliness and cologne and candy sprinkles soothed her. He was warm and broad, like his dad.

“Yes, Sweetie?”

“That was weird tonight. That wasn’t Dad being tired.”

The water churned the bubbles in the bowl, rainbows catching in them as they floated up. The sound brought the red river back to her mind.

“No. It wasn’t.” She conceded tautly.

“So…” Eros folded his arms. It was an Ares mannerism. She had always tried to teach the kids to keep their body language relaxed and open, but half of them had picked up that arm-fold. “What’s up?”

She tucked her hair behind her ear. She didn’t want to look into his face, it was such a perfect face, she didn’t want to see it unhappy. “I’m not sure.”

Eros’ big, warm hand folded on her shoulder. She tilted towards him and the anxious cord loosened a little.

“Well.” He said gently. “Why don’t you go find out? Let me do these.”

She turned to him and his reassuring smile was so beautiful she ached. She hugged him round his middle and he returned it tight. It was established lore in the house, an Eros hug could fix anything. She believed it utterly. Her whole body gave way to the comfort of it. She rubbed her cheek a little on the softness of his shirt. 

She pulled back, with some will power, and squeezed his shoulders. “You’re the best, Baby Bear.”

“No, you.” He said firmly.

She beamed and patted his cheek and went swiftly up the stairs. 

She paused at the bedroom door and listened. 

Silence. 

She played through the scenarios in her head: if he was sick, if he’d broken something and was trying to fix it, if he’d broken something and refused to fix it, if he was crying, if he was shaking, if he’d locked the door, if he snapped, if he sulked, if he’d climbed out of the window. 

_ You’re being ridiculous.  _

She breathed in, breathed out, and opened the door. 

The room was dark. In the sliver of light from the corridor she could just see the outline of his shape. He was on the bed, still in his sweats and curled on his side so she couldn’t see his face. She closed the door quietly and turned the dimmer switch up a fraction. She crept around the bed to face him and crouched to his level. He was asleep, his brow creased and his teeth grinding, his eyes flitting about under his lids. He breathed deep and slow and with a slight rattling that betrayed a tremor in his body, his shoulders bunching tense and smoothing stiff in the rhythm. 

Clutched in his arms, crushed to his chest and squashed under his chin, was Storge’s pillow.

_ Oh, Honey Bear.  _

She reached up and stroked a blonde ringlet from his temple. 

_ You really should have come home sooner. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know how many of you worry about this sort of thing, but a quick note on myth stuff. In both myth and Lore Olympus, gods have ichor, a sacred golden substance, rather than blood. But I decided to give Ares blood because I felt it worked better for capturing the visceral experience of being wounded and treating wounds. 
> 
> The Melissa nymph we meet during the healing is me being entirely shameless. The absolutely wonderful artist, Jamie (Hebe Jebbies) did a STUNNING Melissa nymph Loresona for me and I just couldn't resist working the image into a fic! Melissa was a nymph that nursed Zeus with honey while he was escaping his father, Kronos. Kronos punished her by turning her into an earthworm, but Zeus transformed her into a honey bee instead. Melissae appear in Greek mythology as healers and bringers of civilisation. Jamie was so lovely to work with and I was over the moon with the final piece, which I incorporated into how we see Melissa just before Aphrodite vanishes from the meadow. [Take a look](https://twitter.com/ShawberryTart/status/1286683526197370881) and follow Hebe Jebbies on [IG](https://www.instagram.com/_hebe_jebbies/) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/hebe_jebbies)!


	4. The Shade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eros can see something's really wrong with Dad. He takes it on himself to find out more and protect the family from whatever's going on.
> 
> A huge thank you to my forever Aredite inspiration, [Myth_is_a_Mirror](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Myth_is_a_Mirror/pseuds/Myth_is_a_Mirror) for beta reading! I'd been poking and prodding this chapter trying to make it work for a while and she absolutely made it click into place, go read her beautiful stories!

_ Private Storge’s Mission Log, Day Five: Operation Bring Him Home _

I have been obserfing the Poppa and have made good obserfations. The Poppa looks like reel Poppa. He is the same colour and his hair is the same and he is very tall and his arms are big. But he is not akting like reel Poppa. I have red some books about shades and they say that shades look like the reel person, but they are not that person. They are like that persons shadow. The Poppa does not do all the things reel Poppa does. He does not cuddle Momma. He does not eat snacks. He does not sing bad and bang the table. Today I tested him and asked if he wudd play in the garden, but he did not anser. Private Ludus made lots of noyse and he did not win him by making more noyse, he just walked out. 

While Major Poppa was away I was very sad becaus the house is too quiet and it feels rong and I feel everyone been sad about him. But now he is back it is more quiet. This is why I think it is not Major Poppa. Shades make places quiet so I think it is Poppas shade. I think Major Poppa is still in the Mortel Relm or in the Underwerld and a monster sent his shade to trick us. Major Poppa says no soldier in this rejiment gets left behind. So him too. So we need to rescew Major Poppa from the monster and give the monster back his shade. 

When I have a plan I will have a meeting with Captain Eros and General Momma.

_ End Log. _

Eros turned over the paper with Storge’s curly handwriting on it. On the reverse was a crayon drawing of Storge, him and Momma, all in the same puffs of pink and purple, pulling a figure made of bright yellow squares out of the mouth of a huge blob of black with red eyes and sharp, triangular teeth. Next to it, the Yellow Brick Poppa cheered, a smiling Storge sat on his arm. 

Eros felt sick. He sank down onto the mouse-print blanket on Storge’s bed and hugged his middle, the paper falling to his side with a pitiful rustle. 

He’d been trying so hard to keep Dad’s behaviour out of sight. He’d been up at the crack of dawn to beat the early risers, he’d clattered about making pancakes, he’d sang jangly cartoon jingles, he’d fished out skipping ropes and video games and nature books and been a princess in need of a band of heroes four times. He was exhausted. He hadn’t conditioned his hair this week, he’d cancelled archery practice with Artemis, he’d even skipped out on karaoke with Hermes, and Hermes had gone to all that trouble to get them matching jackets. It had got to the stage where he was cutting down on his hydration so he had to leave the room to pee less, a zit had popped out on his cheek. But any time he left and returned, he felt the void devouring the room. That crater-shadow he’d seen around Dad when he’d first stepped into the garden had not receded. If anything, it had grown, engulfing the house so Dad became the yellow pollen centre of a vast black dahlia, or the red eye of a swirling, lifeless gas planet. There was always a slightly bumpy settling in period after he’d been away, but normally it meant bickering and awkward walking in on stuff, and was easily dissipated by a well-timed meal or tickle fight or a couple of ground rules refreshers. This was different. Storge was right. Dad was a shade. The problem was, Major Poppa wasn’t somewhere easy to reach, like the belly of a hydra.

Eros hauled himself up off the bed and ambled a little aimlessly around Storge’s room. His eyes roved around the picture books stacked neatly on the windowsill and the doll’s house laid out to receive visitors from the miniature Argo on the toy shelf. He leaned down to the house, smiling softly. The Momma doll and the two kid dolls were in the kitchen. The Poppa doll was… Where was the Poppa doll? Eros searched around for it, getting almost irritable as he went from idly looking to firmly scouring the shelves and the floor. He found the Poppa doll squashed between two stuffed dogs, its straw-coloured hair ruffled and its smile even blanker than Eros remembered. Eros folded his arms and jutted his hip out. He told himself to leave it alone. He clucked his tongue. He snatched up the doll and planted it in the kitchen with its family. He glared at it accusingly.

His phone buzzed in his pocket. 

Agape:  _ Dad’s back. _

Eros sighed. This morning Dad had gone to check on Nana and it had been the first relief in days. A short one, apparently.

Eros rubbed the back of his neck. He knew it was something Dad did. He looked into the mirror fixed to Storge’s wardrobe. He did everything he could to look like Momma. The quiff, the manicure, the pretty turquoise polo shirt. He was her son, he was born of Love, he was there for all the joy that could be felt between people. But his shoulders were big and his neck was thick and his jaw stuck out and he couldn’t shake the hundred and one mannerisms that put a big flashing neon sign over his head:  _ War Child.  _

What would he grow up into? He flexed his hands, felt the spring in the tendons and the swell in the muscle. Archer’s hands. One bicep was more puffed up than the other, his back was strong, his eyes were keen. Archer’s body. He wasn’t like Momma. He couldn’t zero in on something and do it until it was done. He was always doing a hundred things, like Dad, mapping the battlefield, his phone at his ear and a mixing bowl under one arm and a pen in the other and seven little soldiers running around his feet. Captain Eros. 

_ Yep _ .  _ There goes Ares’ boy.  _

When he was little, Momma was overjoyed when his powers became apparent. She gave him present after present to help him figure out what he needed to make them manifest. A mirror, a hair comb, a journal, a paintbrush, a fan, a mini chariot. Nice toys, but none of them did very much. It was Dad that suggested the bow. It fit so right, it made Eros feel ten feet tall. Dad taught him how to shoot. Dad hoisted him up and paraded him around on his shoulders. Dad bragged to every Olympian he passed. “Be careful of my boy, he’s a real shot to the heart!” __

Eros’ grip curled around nothing, as if holding the bow now. His fingers fluttered as if feeling the bristle of feathers. He loved archery. He always practised like crazy while Dad was away, so he could show off to him when he came back. The archery was this special thing that kept him and Dad together, that glued up all the cracks from him being away, that smoothed over the bumps in their bond, in Dad’s whole potholed personality. “Show me what you got,” he always said on his first morning home. But not this time. And besides, Eros didn’t feel like shooting right now. Watching Dad this past week, being a warrior had lost its appeal. Being a warrior no longer meant passion and boldness and teamwork and dedication. Being a warrior just meant turning cold.

_ Am I cold for putting weapons into love? Am I just hurting people? What does it say about me that I can only use my power by wounding? Maybe I’m not Aphrodite’s son, maybe I’m all Ares. Violence. Pain. War Child.  _

Another insistent buzz in his pocket.

Agape:  _ Come in, Cap! Do you read? Code Dad!!  _

Eros looked away from his reflection. He didn’t want to look at it. It was foolish to have got so absorbed in it. All his warrior details etched onto the insides of his eyelids and flashed stark every time he blinked. 

He sighed and went downstairs. 

As he emerged into the kitchen, Eros pushed a bounce into the balls of his feet. “Whooooo’s ready for MEDUSA’S GORGON-GANZA!” He bellowed, clapping his hands raucously.

The kids exploded with jubilation and cascaded from the kitchen into the living room, piling onto each other on the couch to watch Olympus’ favourite weekend puppet show with a very morally grey message. Agape glanced darkly at him, then towards the saccharin sound of the blaring TV, then at the hulking back of Dad with his head in the fridge. She slid off her seat and stalked into the living room, nose pointed firmly towards her phone screen. Eros let her pass and followed her glance to Dad. 

Even in his soft, white t-shirt, there was something massive and harsh about him. Eros could feel something radiating off him, but every time he tried to reach out and touch it, it slipped like a soap bar and wouldn’t let him grasp it. As a god whose senses were attuned to sexual desire, he’d spent most of his life being all too aware of his father’s mood. This mess of lack - lack of joy, lack of arousal, lack of heat - Eros wasn’t equipped for it. He hated feeling like he wasn’t equipped. He was the mom-friend. He was the one who always had snacks and a box of tissues. He had everything alphabetised, and he never forgot anyone’s birthday. Not knowing what to do was like having a squirrel sat in his stomach, mistaking his kidneys for acorns.

“Would you stop staring?” 

Dad tossed the comment tersely around the fridge door. Eros folded an arm across his hollow middle and played with the sleeve of his shirt. He made himself keep his eyes on him.

“I can never find anything I wanna eat in this damn fridge,” Dad grumbled. “Your Ma fills it with vegetables.”

Eros swallowed. “She’s trying to keep us healthy.”

“We’re immortal.” The milk bottle clinked as Dad foraged half-heartedly.

“What are you in the mood for?” Eros ventured. “I could make you something.”

“Don’t make me something.” Dad’s voice dropped even lower. “You’ve got enough kids under your feet.”

“Trying to keep them out from under yours,” Eros said into his cheek, looking away.

The fridge door closed. 

The heavy  _ thunk  _ sent a jolt up Eros’ spine. He clamped his teeth together in his soft mouth. Dad glared down the length of the kitchen table, an angry sunflower bursting from a bed of magazines and crayons and half-eaten sandwiches. The red aura around his eyes glimmered and his pupils shrank to pinpricks in the dark glow. The muscles in his shoulders rose jagged.

For one terrible moment, Eros thought Dad was poised to spring, thought he was going to hit him. He flooded with shock and terror. Dad was a grouch but he’d never… 

_ No. No. Come on, he told you what a guy looks like before he gets in a fight.  _

Eros swallowed the lurching nausea back and carefully examined Dad’s stance. Not leaning forward, feet close together and firm on the ground, hands splayed and tense, not furled into fists. Eros looked closer, forced himself to go beyond the red gaze forming a force field between them. The slight tremor in Dad’s torso, the way his knee clenched, the pinch in his lips that said he was sucking hard on his tongue. 

_ You’re holding something back. _

Eros had kept himself strictly closed off these past few days, knowing how easily he could be thrown off his task if he got hit by too big an emotion straying from someone else. Generally his senses were only attuned to love feelings, but in this house everything was pretty tangled in those, so he picked up all sorts, like a radio with a kid spinning the dial. Now, he needed to tune to the channel he’d been most avoiding. He steeled himself, levelled his gaze carefully at Dad, and unlocked his heart.

Pain. 

It bit into Eros’ flesh instantly and latched on. It felt like mosquito bites, hundreds of them, a swarm piercing and draining under the skin. A wild all-over itch, like being doused in hydrochloric acid.

_ Ah! Is this how you feel right now? _

Dad flinched and his jaw seized up.

_ Can you tell what I’m doing? _

Dad rolled his shoulders and flexed his neck. 

_ Let me do this. _

Dad balled his fists and rocked back on his foot. The sensation left Eros as quickly as it had onset.

_ Damn it. Come on, what was that? _

Maybe Eros could draw it out another way. He pulled himself up to his full height, smaller than the War God, but damn well getting there. 

“Maybe the little ones should be under your feet a bit more. They missed you,” he said pointedly.

Dad’s cheek twitched. 

“Did you miss us? You’ve not actually said yet.”

Dad shifted his weight, one shoulder drawing up towards Eros. It was defensive.

Eros raised his chin stubbornly. “Something hit you on the head and make you forget how to talk?”

Dad drew a long, slow breath in through flaring nostrils and sucked his lower lip white. The vague aura of Something Wrong fizzed around him. He looked like a mint hissing and dissolving in cola. 

Eros pushed his heart open wider, aching as it was, and his eyes tinted opal. 

Something moved under his father's skin. Something restless, pushing up against the tough layer of gold, trying to break through. Every single one of Dad’s muscles seemed strained, twisting tight like circus ropes holding down a struggling, hollering elephant. His Adam’s apple sprang up and down, as he swallowed something back, over and over. 

Eros peered. His vision smudged white at the edges. Dad’s figure pulsed and changed. A great red tower and inside a wild flock of shadows. The beating of wings, the lash of tails, the gnash of teeth. Frenzied. Furious. It looked like Tartarus put in a blender.

_ What the… _

“Eros, what’s wrong with your eyes?” 

Dad’s sharp voice snapped Eros’ concentration. He lost the vision and it immediately became confused and difficult to grasp in his memory.

Eros fluttered his lashes and brushed the corner of his eye. “Mascara felt like it was running.”

Dad did not look convinced. His shoulder drew even higher and he glared at Eros warily.

“Hey,” Eros said cautiously. “Is everything OK?”

“Everything’s fine.” Dad grunted.

“You seem a little…” Eros searched for a word, the strange flurry of shadows losing definition by the minute. “Different.”

“No.” Dad replied tersely.

“It's just…” Eros took a step forward around the table, his hand reaching out.

Dad stumbled backwards, as if burned. He banged his tailbone on the kitchen sink and winced and whipped round to it, then whipped back to Eros, watching him as if he were an advancing wolf.

Eros frowned.

“What are my boys up to?” 

Momma floated into the room from the garden, bringing with her the swishing scent of myrtle and lavender and roses. A dog-eared romance novel was in her hand and a large pair of heart-shaped sunglasses gleamed on her head, pinning back her avalanche of hair, lightened lilac by the sun. 

Dad looked immediately to her, his gaze ripping from Eros like a waxing sheet coming off.

“Hey, Babe,” he said dispassionately. “We got anything to eat?”

Momma went to him with a low giggle and stroked her hand over his stomach. “Honey Bear, you’ll be too big for the bed.”

What should happen next flashed across Eros’ mind.

_ “I’m already too big for the bed.” A rough, hearty growl. Dad gripping Momma’s hips and pulling her in. _

_ Peeling bell laughter. “Ares! Have some mercy on the kids!” _

_ “This is Eros’ whole job, I’m being a good influence.” A slap on her rump.  _

_ “I’ll make you a snack.”  _

_ Momma moving around the kitchen like a tow-truck with Dad’s hefty body attached to her. Dad getting determinedly in the way until she lost her temper and pounded him on the chest. Exactly what he’d been waiting for. A squeal. The swift sweeping up of Momma’s buoyant body over Dad’s broad shoulder. The thudding of Dad’s feet on the stairs like a pirate’s on the deck of a ship, carting his prize up to the bedroom.  _

_ Eros yelling after them. “Decorum!” _

“Yeah, guess I should wait.” Dad puffed grimly out of his nose. 

He lightly rubbed Momma’s hand on his abs and slipped out of her touch. He wandered out into the garden, without looking back. 

Momma watched him go. Eros’ heart bled at the look of worry and hurt on her face. Momma was so strong. She needed nothing from anyone. Except for the backwards glance. Leaving without looking back was the cruellest thing you could do to her. She didn’t need you to be with her, she was fine on her own, but she needed to know you would be, if you could. Dad always gave her that. Always. In the most hectic hurries or the fiercest fights, Dad always looked back at the woman he loved more than his own life, the woman he couldn’t bear to break from. That backward glance was the thread he spun between them, the eternal cord that connected them in their long and impossible partnership. 

Storge really was right. Major Poppa wasn’t home.

*

The day went like a cart trundling on rails. Eros kept the kids entertained while Momma bustled like a particularly conscientious machine with housework, and Dad… was also around. 

By the end of it, Eros felt like a wrung-out rag. He collapsed onto his bed and sank gratefully into the fresh, floral scent of clean sheets. The mattress took his weight and held him together, as all his muscles and bones let go and fell apart under his skin. He stared up at his ceiling, smudged rose pink and sky blue in cotton clouds. He blew out through his lips and played with his unravelling forelock, boinging it like a kitten playing with elastic ribbon. He cast himself adrift in the first quiet of the day that hadn’t felt like nails screeching on a blackboard. 

His phone buzzed.

He sighed and fished it reluctantly out of his pocket.

Agape:  _ I can’t take it much longer. _

Eros’ heartstring twanged with regret. He’d really thought today was over. His other heartstrings strummed over the top of it. Poor Agape, this must be hard on her. 

He hovered the phone over his face, squinting against the glare in his prickling eyes, and typed:  _ It won’t be long. He always struggles to settle in. He’ll be back to his old self lickety-split. _

He looked back at the ceiling and put his phone on his chest. It clacked on the button of his polo shirt as it buzzed again.

Agape:  _ He’s never like this. This is super weird. It’s so awkward. And not like fun stupid parents awkward. Bad awkward. _

Eros’ brow buckled helplessly. He keyed an evasion in with his thumbs:  _ I thought all awkward was bad awkward. _

Agape:  _ Don’t be obtuse, you know what I mean. _

Eros:  _ Oooooo obtuse. Get Miss Fancy Fins. _

Agape:  _ Fuck off, Candyfloss! _

Eros:  _ Hey, don’t swear!!!! _

A smile twisted the corner of his mouth. It withered at her next message.

Agape:  _ I’m serious, Eros. Something’s really wrong.  _

A pause, then…

Agape:  _ I’m scared. _

Eros crumpled. His heart was so sore, it had been clenching and weeping by turns for days, and now that message and Storge’s mission log were like two great knitting needles skewering it. He took a calming breath, straining his ears to hear the gentle shushing of wind in the leaves outside.

Eros:  _ It’s gonna be OK, Greenbean, I promise. Momma’s got it under control and I’m working on him too. _

Was that true? Eros had never felt so shy of his father. If he was really honest with himself, here in the twilight, he had been so helpful with the kids because it filled up his time too much to face whatever was going on behind that red mist. 

Agape:  _ OK. _

He frowned. 

Eros:  _ OK? Come on, gimme me a lil more. _

Agape:  _ OK, Loser. _

He snorted. He shook his head with a small, tender smile.

Eros:  _ I love you loads. _

Agape:  _ Cringe.  _

A pause. 

Agape:  _ Love you too. _

He sent her five heart emojis.

She sent him a skull.

He put his phone on his nightstand.

He rolled over and buried his face in his pillow. 

In the flood of darkness the elusive memory of his vision crept back into clarity. A tumult of frantic black shapes hurling themselves at the inner walls of Dad’s sturdy form, Dad hardening his body, layering himself in rock, like a mountain containing boiling magma. The image surged behind Eros’ eyes. What was that? Was Dad possessed? Was it a curse? Was it a trauma? Had something happened to him? Was he in danger? Was he dangerous? Did Momma know? Should he tell her what he saw? Was he even sure he saw it? It started to fade again, sieving through the mesh of useless, confused questions reeling through his mind, until it became almost a memory of a memory. This sort of thing wasn’t really in Eros’ power, he could feel himself losing his grip on the vision, losing any understanding he’d gained from it, losing his ability to stay awake and work it out, but knowing as soon as he dreamed it would only get more unclear.

He bunched his pillow either side of his head and snuffed out the horrible, supernova silence of the house.

_ What am I going to do?  _

Something glimmered behind his eyes. Something warm, hopeful even, like sunshine peeking from behind a black cloud.

_ “Do you know why I always call you Captain, Captain?”  _ Dad’s voice floated into his mind and filled the spaces left by the retreating vision, speaking low and sincere the day he left last Spring.  _ “Because you’re a leader. I know you’re only young, but I saw it in you the day you first opened those big, pink eyes. You follow your own path, like I do, like your Ma does, but so much more than that. You take people on the path with you. You galvanise. You comfort. People don’t just have faith in you, you inspire people to have faith in themselves.” _

Eros remembered his cheeks glowing, rubbing the back of his neck Dad-style and coming over all bashful.  _ “Aw, come on, Pops. You don’t have to say all that stuff just because you’re going away.” _

_ “Don’t give me so much credit.”  _ Dad’s brash, blinding smile flooded his memory.  _ “I’m not that nice a guy. I’m saying it because it’s true. All the time I’m not here, I miss you hoodlums like crazy. I wake up every fucking morning like someone got in my tent in the night and punched me in the gut. But at least I’m not scared. I’m not scared because my troops have their Captain, and he’s the kind that faces up to any danger and gets everyone home safe without a scratch on them. Fuck, I wish half my commanders were made like you, Eros. I’d never lose another battle.” _

Eros pressed his face into the pillow and breathed hard through his squashed nose, driving a wave of tears away that suddenly swelled behind his eyelids. He swallowed and it burned in his throat and down his sternum. He turned Dad’s words over and over in his mind, like a talisman. He breathed deeper, grounding himself in the smell of fresh linen and his own guava shampoo smushed into the pillow. 

He refused to believe that Dad had just been paying lip service that day. For all the hurdles they’d had to jump over together to keep their equilibrium as father and son, Dad had never let him doubt that he truly believed in him, truly respected him, truly loved him. That can’t have just vanished over one Summer, right?

He gripped the pillow, sinking his hands into it until his knuckles smarted.

_ You know what?  _ _ If your commanding officer gives you a job to do, you don’t leave it half done. _

The weary soreness in his muscles dimmed. His mind sharpened. His eyes dried. He flexed his broad shoulders and rolled into his back and fixed the swirling sky on his ceiling with a steady, determined gaze.

_ Alright, Dad. I don’t know what I saw today. But, whether you’re the danger that needs facing or the soldier that needs getting home safe, you made me Captain and you’re going to see what that means. No more hiding behind baby-sitting. No more telling myself all I can do is keep everyone distracted.  _ _ It's time to stop running from whatever this is. Time to stop running from you. _

He flexed again, feeling his muscles roll against the mattress, testing that strength he’d been so wary of that afternoon. Archer’s strength. Warrior’s strength. More than that. Eros strength.

He took a deep, slow breath and exhaled sharply through his teeth. 

He curled his hand into a resolute fist.

_ Reporting for duty. _


	5. Echoes in the Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aphrodite tries to lure Ares back to his old self, but things are worse than she realised. She goes in search of his secrets.
> 
> Smut warning!
> 
> A huge thank you to [Myth_is_a_Mirror](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Myth_is_a_Mirror/pseuds/Myth_is_a_Mirror) for beta reading the beginning of this chapter and for the advice on Chapter Four that carried forward! I can't recommend her fics highly enough!

Stars cast a twinkling sheen on the windowpane. Aphrodite curled up in her rose red satin camisole, nuzzled into the crook of her elbow and peeked playfully at Ares as he changed for bed. He moved like a lion, all muscle and lethargy. The thing about being good at fighting is you never have to do it for very long; he could take out an enemy with one move, maybe two on an off day. His laziness told you how delectably dangerous he was. 

Aphrodite felt a pleasant flutter in her belly as he pulled his t-shirt over his head and exposed his broad, wrought-gold back. She imagined her fingernails scraping down it, leaving dark orange streaks, like she was painting on a canvas. Hera had trimmed his hair, clipped short on the back of his head, accentuating his strong neck and shoulders, but she always left the tousled, vanilla curls on top. Aphrodite wanted to cling to them for dear life as he tongued her clit like ice cream. She nibbled the corner of her mouth. 

_You’re taking way too long to get into this bed, Mister._

He started undoing his belt and her eyes shot magnetically to his ass, cruelly concealed by denim. Then he stopped himself. He fished in his pocket and brought out a closed fist. He placed something on the dresser in front of him. 

Aphrodite perked up on one elbow like a cat hearing a can opener. “What’s that?”

Ares glanced back at her, without making eye contact. He picked up the object and held it up over his shoulder, then put it back and returned to his belt. 

“Why do you have a shell?” She asked. The sweet little fan-shape had winked pink as he’d held it up.

Ares shrugged, his back still to her. “Just something I picked up in the Mortal Realm.” His belt chinked open and his zipper thwipped. 

“Are you collecting now?”

He spoke lower, toneless. “It reminded me of you.”

Her skin warmed. He really was a sweetheart, if only everyone else could see that. Actually, no, keep the secret, she liked having him to herself. She rolled to open out the view of her body, the camisole drawing up to show a pretty heart-shaped birthmark on her hip, like a fallen crocus petal. She teased around it with her fingertip. 

“Well, you have the real thing now,” she cooed. _So come take it, already._

Ares smiled at her over his shoulder, but it was a cool smile. His smiles had all been without heat since he’d got home. There was a flash of fire that first time on the kitchen counter, but nothing more. If she touched him, he let her, if he passed too close he brushed her with his fingertips. Occasionally his lips found her hair or his hand stroked her back, but it was as if he only half wanted to touch her. As if something inside him was retreating, while something else was pulling him towards her. This was the first night all week they’d come to bed at the same time. He didn’t seem able to sleep before the small hours. They weren’t fucking. They weren’t hugging. They were barely kissing. 

_Why don’t you want me, Sunbeam?_

He was the only person in the realms she truly needed to want her. This strange distance made her feel like knotweed, like an invasive species in her own home, like all she was good for was being pulled out and thrown on a compost heap to rot away. There wasn’t a person alive who could share a bed with the Goddess of Love and resist her. But her own Ares, her life, her heart, to him she had become at best part of the furniture, at worst some poisonous spider he was trying to keep to the corner. 

Had something changed while he was away? She tried to sense his love for her, the wonderful, invigorating nectar she sucked like a hummingbird all the time he was near her. It wasn’t that it was gone, but it felt buried, encased. Rather than a hummingbird supping from a soft, open flower, she felt like a woodpecker chiselling through dense bark for her sustenance. 

_What are those walls, my love? I’ll starve to death._

She looked at the shell on the dresser. He’d picked it up because it reminded him of her. He was carrying it around still. 

He obviously wanted something of her. 

If anyone could work with that, it was Aphrodite.

Ares tugged his jeans down and her train of thought was interrupted by his tight, hard ass snuggled in black. His hip dropped to the side and his leg cocked, every part of him aligning into a smooth harmony of angles and mounds and shadows. The low light glimmered on him, gave him the look of an ifrit behind a veil of flame. Her eyes traced his shape, his scars, every detail from the dent at the nape of his neck to the tendon jutting in the crook of his knee. She wanted her arms around him, she wanted to be hugging his shoulders, so huge she couldn’t touch her fingertips together. She wanted to kiss each of his abs in order. She wanted that feeling again of riding him like a raft on wild rapids, clutching the carved plain of his chest.

“I love that you always naturally stand like you're posing for a sculptor,” she said with a smile, still appraising him.

He finally turned round to face her and she could feast her eyes all over again, gorging on his torso and his thighs and the bump of his cock behind his boxer-briefs. She glanced at the peach stain of the gash across his chest. 

“There aren't enough statues of you,” she continued wistfully. “If I was a mortal, I'd fill the streets with images of that beautiful body.”

The strawberry smudging across Ares’ eyes tinged pink grapefruit. He gave her a half-smile with a match-strike of his old warmth. “Then there wouldn't be enough room for statues of you, and you're actually worth worshipping.” Bitterness nicked the end of his words.

She perked up. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.”

“Ares…”

“Nothing.” He flapped his hand casually at her and picked up his clothes and dropped them on a chair. “I'm talking outta my ass.”

Aphrodite levelled her gaze like a cocked arrow. “So, talk.”

Ares shrugged and looked past her out of the window. “I'm just saying, they don't worship me. They invoke me when I'm relevant, but I'm not so much the statue type.”

Aphrodite frowned. “They build statues of you.”

He blew softly out through his nose and spoke with light dismissal. “I guess.”

She stroked the sheets, imagining a rope under her hand attached to his middle, pulling him to the bed. She smiled with a glint in her eye. “But there should be more. And no more of this nonsense where you're holding a sword and shield and looking like you have a stick up your ass. Makes you look like someone's dad.”

He smirked. “I am quite a lot of people's dad.”

His smile made her beam, it twanged the knots in her heart. “You know what I mean.”

The rope was working.

He walked slowly to the bed and bumped the mattress with his knee. A little smoke threaded into his voice. “What do you suggest, then?” 

She rolled her tongue behind her pout. “I want them to see you how I see you.” She raised her arm in invitation, slinking her body in the revealing satin. “Stretched out on a bed with your hair all ruffled, waiting for someone to have their way with you. A gorgeous, generous, grinning slut.” She over-pronounced the final word, flicking her tongue like a viper, lacing it with the essence of a moan.

She saw his eyes flicker, his mouth curl. She fixed him with her hungriest look, dripping with brazen allure.

_Come on, out you come, I know you’re in there._

He seemed to waver, to shrink back a little. Then she saw his chest expand in a breath, his hands flex. He slowly sank onto the bed and slid carefully to her, settling on his side, but tilted backwards with one leg crooked and one arm bent behind his head, flexing his bicep and exaggerating the muscles of his torso, opening his body, opening the most vulnerable, delicious part of him. His hair bounced into his eyes and he raised an eyebrow. “Like this?”

Aphrodite felt all her knotweed-ness wither away, she became blooming roses and lavender.

She touched her fingers to his chest and strummed his warm, etched skin. “Mmm. Arch your back a little more?”

Ares laughed softly and obeyed. His hips tilted up and her mouth watered for him. His dark, malt scent was heaven, it was like walking past a pub kitchen window when you’re hungry. Her eyes sparkled and she flushed lilac, she couldn’t stop looking at him. A tremor hummed between her legs. 

“They sculpt you naked,” she murmured.

“You too.” 

His eyes glimmered and sent a thrill through her.

_Keep coming, Honey._

She giggled and hurriedly threw off her camisole, while he peeled his underwear away. He caught her flesh, as it jiggled with her bubbling glee, and he rolled her onto him. His warmth enveloped her, she felt like kindling burning up, stoking his fire. She closed her eyes and dove in with delight. She fell to his mouth and her blood sang as he pressed a deep, stirring kiss to her. She sighed in desperate relief. He gathered her close and a sweet ache pressed her muscle as he clutched hard at her back. His hand slid to her ass and he gripped her with another jolt of arousing pain. She hooked her leg over him, locking their hips together. She cupped his face, grazing his jaw with her fingernails. He sucked in a breath sharply and his brow creased gently. His back arched and his torso rose to be blanketed in her softness. There was a lick of salt on his upper lip, she sucked on it and nestled her pussy against his cock. He moaned in his throat. She shivered as she felt him swell, fitting to her furrow. 

She shoved him fully onto his back. He rolled easily and she rolled with him and landed astride his hips, pinning him down with her hands spread on his broad chest. She rotated her hips, slotting him to her, grinning devilishly at his hoarse groan and the way he grew to meet her. He ran his hands over her thighs and his eyes closed softly. She rocked back and forth, starting to slip with ease as his hardness and his rough breathing and his stunning body made her wet. Sweat beaded on her back and the roots of her hair nipped. He rocked with her, the slightest friction between them tensing her core and turning her legs weak. She rolled her spine and thrust heavily forward to hang her breasts over his lips. His eyes fluttered open, glazed and garnet, and he caught her with his mouth, sucking and licking her tender. She let him flicker his tongue on her nipple until her clit was ready to pop, then she whipped back to sit up, straddling him, and scooped her hair on top of her head and heaved in the air to cool. She closed her eyes and waited eagerly for the chase, waited for his bereft mouth to come darting upwards, for him to wrap her tight and devour her as he murmured feverish worship, muffled into her flesh and tangled round a lashing tongue. 

She opened her eyes. Ares lay beneath her, writhing a little, his eyes dropped closed and his hands stroking her thighs and his knuckles occasionally dusting her belly and the underside of her breasts. 

“Oh, Honey Bear,” she crooned, “You want me?” 

He nodded, his eyes stayed closed. “Uhuh.” 

Annoyance frayed the edges of her pleasure. “Then tell me.” 

He squeezed her thigh insipidly. “I want you, Babe.” 

She bristled. An old echo hung in her ear like the crackle in a record. _"_ _I want you so much, Plum Blossom. Fuck, your body makes me so crazy. Oh Gods, I could do this forever. Don’t come and don’t let me. Let’s just stay like this for the rest of fucking time. Your pussy is my fucking world. Strike that, your tits are my fucking world. Actually, it’s your hair. And your neck. No, your mouth, kiss me again. Fuck, that’s perfect. I can’t decide, let me have all of it, all of you. Gods, I want all of you so much, it’s gonna break me."_

She looked down at the subtlety of his movements. His grip had softened, losing the usual bleach of his knuckles. His muscles were quiet under his skin, not jutting and rolling like when he thrashed beneath her to drive her faster. He wasn’t looking at her, wasn’t pouring that scorching, luxurious, red gaze over her. She loved swimming in that gaze, boiling in it. His veiled eyes iced her. His brow was smooth, his breath was steady. For a moment she thought he might be asleep. Indignation flashed through her. She crushed his chest down and ground fiercely on his cock. 

“Oh, Gods!” He choked on his exclamation.

His back arched and his nipples piqued hard. She grabbed them between finger and thumb and twisted. He choked again and his eyes snapped open. He grabbed her waist and launched her sideways, flipping her onto her back. The mattress springs screeched with her impact. Her heart bucked.

_Yes, Ares, there you are! Maybe he just needed it to be this way round tonight._

She wrapped him in her legs and snaked her spine under him. Her clit aching as he loomed over her, overpowering her with his scent and shadow. She combed her fingers into his hair. She tried to lock his gaze, to taunt him, to see his exquisite, delicious appetite. But he dove. He broke her gaze swiftly and buried his face in her neck and drew long, slow laps up from her shoulder to her jaw. It sent ripples of pleasure across her skin. The hairs on her arms rose and she quivered and sighed.

“Yes, yes! Is this what you need, Honey Bear?” 

No answer. He sucked over her jugular and circled his thumb on her nipple.

“That feels so good, Ares. You like this body?”

“Yeah, Babe.” He stroked down her belly and through the wreath of hair. His touch on her clit was electric, rubbing a current to life as he massaged the soft, wet flesh.

She gasped and moaned, digging her nails into his back. “So, what are you going to do with it?”

_"I’m going to eat you alive, you fucking delicious slice of cream cake. I’m going lick every inch of you until I can’t taste anything else for the rest of this year, and then I’m going to spank you until you’ve squealed that pretty voice hoarse, then when your body is ringing with wants and sensations, I’m going to drive my cock into you and fuck you harder than any creature in all the realms has ever fucked you and will ever fuck you. You’re going to be raw and breathless and ruined and you’re going to love it. Now spread those beautiful legs."_

“Can’t you tell?” He husked a low chuckle into her ear. He massaged her seam, opening her easily, like he was teasing the segments of a clementine apart.

“I want you to talk to me about it,” Aphrodite half coaxed and half grumbled.

He sighed and she couldn’t tell if it was in pleasure or discomfort. She tensed. It smarted a little as his finger slipped inside. That jolted her with irritation. She never tensed against Ares, she knew his touch so well, she fit him like a glove, made for each other. She screwed her eyes shut and dropped her head back on the pillow and sucked his scent through her nose.

_Patience. Stop setting standards. Enjoy it. Your Ares is in your bed. Enjoy it._

She released her breath and she relaxed. She gathered his soft curls into her hand and nuzzled his shoulder and writhed to feel his skin heat hers.

“It’s OK.” She whispered. “I don’t need you to talk. I just need you to move in me. I need you at the deepest part of myself. Ares, let’s make love.”

She felt him sink against her gratefully. She bound him in her arms and opened her legs wider to summon him. He slid into her in a long, graceful motion. Her body flared with pleasure. She held him jealously and trembled against him. He stilled, he held his breath. Then his breath singed her as he exhaled heavily and took up slow, deep thrusts. His cock slicked up and down her core, that electrical current pulsing and crackling in her flesh. She felt like if a drop of his sweat dripped onto her skin, it might spark and engulf the bed in white fire. 

“Yes, my love,” she murmured. “Gods, yes!”

“Gods, Aph…”

He crushed her under his kiln-hot weight, misting her with sizzling sweat and driving into her so the sizzle turned to steam. Their bodies chafed on each other. She hugged him so tight it ached in her shoulders. 

“Your cock is so hot, Honey Bear. It’s setting me on fire. Oh, burn me alive.”

He sped up. He kissed her neck over and over and his back and hips rolled as he plunged into her again and again, faster, deeper. She could feel him everywhere, she was encased in his body. The pleasure cascaded from her core through her flesh, it pulsed and surged and flocked around their point of connection and swirled maddeningly, like starlings.

“Fuck, you feel good, Babe,” Ares moaned. “I’m gonna come.”

_Already? Seriously?_

She was getting there but she’d expected to chase herself back from the brink at least twice before they gave in. And what was all this “I’m gonna” bullshit? He was supposed to ask, he always asked, even if he had no intention of obeying, he liked to hear her taunt him, or scold him, or beg. She felt a pulse in his cock and clenched around it. Wow, he really was about to. She rolled her eyes at the ceiling and sneaked her hand between them to urge herself through her clit. Ares thrust and panted roughly, his flesh smacking on hers and his ass clenching in a hurried rhythm. He was pounding now, the pleasure morphing into a series of hard claps of sharp desire up her spine. She dug her fingertip into the peak of tenderness on her clit and bore down on it. It stabbed her with sensation. She started to shake and flinch beneath him. The pleasure soared, sudden and intense. The heat from his undulating body blazed, her skin was sore where they rubbed together. She just wanted to be cool again, she wanted it to break. He grunted in her ear, like a boar.

Lightning struck. It coursed through her body, painful and numbing, wringing her out and leaving her limp and gasping for breath and sticky with sweat. Ares groaned and tensed over her and his cock pumped inside her. His tension wilted away and he collapsed into kissing her, his mouth soft and lazy on hers. He lingered in the kiss for a while, hardly moving his lips.

He rolled off her.

She was washed with relieving air. She dragged her hair over the pillow to cool her neck and pressed her hands to her burning cheeks. The last of the electricity fizzled out. She turned her head to look at Ares. He was curled on his side, facing her, one hand stretched towards her, not quite touching. His eyes were closed. His chest rose and fell in deep, slow breaths. She stroked the edge of his beautiful, red blush. 

He snored.

She raised her eyebrows in annoyed surprise and huffed to look back at the ceiling. Her body was a confusion of echoes. Echoes of pleasure, of memory, of worry and frustration and exhaustion. She was so exhausted. Her eyelids fluttered. Sleep took her.

She dreamed of an afternoon last year. 

It had been a long day in Athens. That city was full of over-thinkers. She had been thwarted in four match-makings in a row, by nothing but the mortals’ own hard-headedness. “It wouldn’t be proper.” “What would my friends think?” “What if she’s using me?” “What if he’s not right for my future?” She was beyond relieved to be back on Olympus.

She came storming into the house in a scarlet whirl.

Red flag to a bull, Ares immediately appeared in the living room doorway, leaning leisurely and giving her the kind of look a carnivorous plant gives a butterfly. 

“Everything OK, Soda Pop?”

“UGH!” Aphrodite cast her fists into the air, knocking her dainty laurel crown askew.

Ares suppressed a smile and it needled her.

“Why can’t mortals just FUCK? Like ADULTS? Why does everything have to be part of their damn tapestry of complications?” She was popping like a firecracker, going blackberry in her cheeks. “It’s all about how sex can hurt them and betray them and benefit them! Why can’t people see that sex is meant to be _fun_?" 

Ares cocked an eyebrow and rolled his shoulders back, the strap of his tank top slipping down. “In the mood for a little fun, were you?”

“Yes!” she railed. “But, oh no! I forgot that no one in Athens is allowed to have an emotion unless it can give them a university credit!” 

She tossed her hair. The crown slipped further. She squawked and wrenched it off her head and threw it like a discus across the kitchen. She shot her look to Ares. He smirked gleefully. She must have messed her hair up something terrible.

“What are you staring at?” she snapped.

Ares grinned. “Only the most beautiful woman in the world.” 

“Don’t be smooth. I’m not in the mood.”

“No?” Another jaguar roll of the shoulders. “What are you in the mood for?”

Heat.

She put her hands on her hips. “I want to get my claws into something.”

“Something?”

“Someone.”

A beat.

“Huh.” Ares took a step backwards into the living room. “The kids are out, by the way.” He turned his back and sauntered out of sight.

She watched how he dragged his feet, taunting her with how easy it would be to catch up to him. Her stomach flooded with bubbles. She darted after him and pounced, leaping onto his back and wrapping his shoulders so her feet kicked off the floor.

He reeled and laughed, a coarse, volatile, volcanic laugh that shook the walls. “Whoah! Kitten wants to play, does she?"

She lapped his neck. "Kitten wants to play, does puppy want to play?" 

Another beat.

Ares erupted into riotous barking. He threw her off so she stumbled backwards and he wheeled around, panting and barking with his tongue lolling, bent double and wiggling his hips as if wagging a tail. Aphrodite’s anger was swept away. She hissed and mewed and clawed curled fingers at him. 

“RUFFRUFFRUFFRUFFRUFF!”

Ares bounded forward and she wailed and sprang away. He chased her around the living room, knocking over lamps and scattering cushions and shoving tables at odd angles. He was too big for the chic, delicate spaces of the house. She loved it about him. She loved having her favourite thing in the world fill any room he was in. She careened around the furniture, caterwauling and slashing with her fingernails every time he got too close. With a final reverberating growl, he gambolled forward and bowled her over. She shrieked and he roared with laughter as they went crashing to the fur rug in front of the hearth. She landed safely enclosed in his arms, panting in shock, her heart galloping.

“You brute! You utter brute!”

He was still laughing. He rolled her on top of him and swallowed her squeals in a ravenous kiss.

Then they were delirious with desire.

They tore at each other’s clothes, kissing furiously around the flinging of fabric. He was so hot to the touch that she felt like a toasting marshmallow. Her heart was buffeting her other organs, she was so wildly energised, so maddeningly turned on. She could feel he was too. His arousal trampled her, like stampeding buffalo.

A high, harsh ripping sound as he fought too hard with her dress. She didn’t care, she helped him shred it around her and threw herself against his skin as she was finally torn free of it. They kissed and bit each other bruised. They ran their hands greedily on each other, slapping and squeezing and scratching. Her body erupted with sensation, every touch made her moan so loud it shook the ceiling lights. He was talking so fast she could only make out half the words, a cocktail of worship and commands and pleas and swearing like a sailor. She peppered him with crescent moon teeth marks, pulled his hair, strangled his waist with her legs.

She grasped his cock and pumped him furiously, like he was an old-fashioned fire extinguisher. He worked her clit like he was whipping cream. They took every advantage of the empty house, moaning and calling each other’s names competitively loud, giggling as they escalated to the point of deafening themselves. Her clit pummelled her with pleasure. She tumbled sideways with a wave of sensation and he fell with her. They rolled all over the rug, white fibres plastering to their misted skin, as they tormented each other ruthlessly.

She pinned him.

He pinned her.

They wrestled until they landed facing each other on their sides. He scooped her in and ploughed into her and she screamed. They rolled again, thrusting and rocking and grinding as they tumbled, teeming with pleasure and mirth. He banged into the legs of the coffee table. She gasped, but he laughed again and nibbled her from her cheek to her shoulder, so she felt like she was covered in pinpricks. He pistoned into her, filling her up with delight and desire. His hair was a wreck, his body was littered with marks, his breath was grating and his eyes were bonfires. They landed heavily on their sides again and he grasped her thigh and pulled himself deeper, striking her like a bell. Their flesh slapped, their juices gushed, their fingernails dug brutally into each other’s flesh.

“FUCK, YES!”

“HOLY SHIT!”

They came in a tumult of shaking and kissing and crying to the sky, moaning and laughing long after the galloping pleasure had peaked.

They lay entwined, gasping for breath, beaming and shining, in the middle of the wreckage of the living room.

“We’re home!”

Eros’ voice from the kitchen and the sound of little feet pattering through the front door.

“Shit!” they hissed in sync.

They scrambled up, knocking over a vase of wooden flowers on the coffee table. Ares hopped about frantically, pulling his sweats on, stuffing his underwear into the pocket. Aphrodite snapped her underwear on and picked up the remains of her dress, swore again, bundled it under a cushion and pulled Ares’ tank top over her head, tugging the hem down just over her gusset.

“That’s my shirt!” Ares whispered urgently.

“Should have thought of that before you tore my dress up!”

A candyfloss cloud puffed into the doorway. They whirled to face it, hair wild, skin flushed, faces glowing.

“Guys!” Eros whined. “We watch pre-school age cartoons in here!”

They opened their mouths to give a cover story. They looked at each other. They exploded into giggles. 

“Honestly!” Eros threw up his hands. “It’s like living with a couple of teenagers!” He turned and bobbed back to the kitchen. “Or rabbits!”

“What’s going on in there?” Ludus’ voice.

“Nothing! Don’t go in!” Eros again.

The giggles subsided. Ares and Aphrodite looked at the ruins of each other. Their laughter bubbled up again. Ares reached out and pulled her into his arms. They smiled against each other’s lips as they kissed. She threw her arms around his neck and the tank top rode up so their abs pressed skin to skin. He hugged her tight and they broke their kiss, nuzzling each other’s noses, still grinning so wide it might ping their ears off. Ares smoothed her hair and pinched her ass, and rested his lips to the top of her head. His chest kept buzzing with a low, loving laugh.

Aphrodite awoke, smiling, in the depths of the night. She shifted closer into the centre of the bed, waiting for Ares’ arms to fold around her.

She went cold.

She opened her eyes and saw he was curled up against the edge of the bed, lying as far from her as he could with his back to her. It was as if he was trying to sleep as protected from her touch as possible. 

The dream sputtered and wisped into the darkness.

The knotweed feeling returned. A Love Goddess should never feel out of place in bed. She prickled with resentment. What was he doing cowering from her like this? Her eyes strained in the darkness to make out the details of him. Her sharp gaze traced the web of scarring, like criss-cross country roads through wild, mountainous terrain. How many times had his flesh been ripped apart and stitched back together again? How many times had their love? Too many. But at least enough to know that it could always be mended.

She moved carefully, tensing her body against the rustle of sheets. He was a heavy sleeper usually, but she didn’t trust his recent restlessness. She reached out and, gently as a leaf falling on the surface of a pool, laid her hand to his back, over his heart. He took a shallow, disturbed breath. She froze. He shifted a little and snuffled. His breathing deepened again. She relaxed.

His back was uncharacteristically cool. Ares usually scalded her fingertips. His wonderful heat had her craving him every time she so much as brushed past, like a cat leaping onto a car bonnet and curling up on the sizzling metal. The heat came from inside him, a torrent of flame that whirled and flared and spiralled throughout his being. Ares’ heart was a fire-dancer and it made him beautiful - brightness, energy, temper, lust, raucousness, controlled savagery, fierce devotion. Ares cooled was Ares lost. Had he been extinguished? Or just dimmed? That brief thrill of being kindling as he'd clutched her, could she create that again? Refuel him?

She closed her eyes and subtly pressed her hand firmer to his back. She silenced her breathing. She drove her focus to his heartbeat, feeling it thrum against her palm and travel through her nerves to fill her mind. 

_Ba-dum._

_Ba-dum._

_Ba-dum-dum._

_Ba-ba-dum._

Erratic. Strange.

She nestled her fingers into the density of his flesh. Thread-fine scars converged under her palm. She drifted to the rhythm of his pulse, rode it in her mind like a paper boat skimming along a river. What was in his heart that was upsetting its current?

_Ba-dum-ba-_

_The tramping of feet on sand._

_-dum._

_“Ares, Lord, urge us on!”_

_Ba-dum._

_“Retreat! Retreat!”_

_Ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-dum._

_“Why have you forsaken us?”_

_Dum-ba._

_“Why did we throw in our lot with him? The poets say he is not loved on Olympus. Perhaps they punished us for misplaced loyalties.”_

_Ba-ba-ba-_

_“Do not presume to know the gods!”_

_“Don’t point your sword at me!”_

_Ba-dum._

_“A hated god brings a hated fate. We thought we needed his might, but we should have sacrificed to Athena.”_

_“Nonsense. We were brash and we made foolish mistakes.”_

_“Isn’t that what the God of War is known for?”_

_Ba-dum._

_The snap of flame on wood. The thunk of barrels being loaded onto ships. Snorting horses. Arguments. Constant arguments._

_“Well, if YOU hadn’t left your post…”_

_“You are too old to be here!”_

_“You are too young!”_

_“What, have you never held a spear before?”_

_Ba-dum-dum. Ba-ba-dum._

_“Don’t talk to me like that!”_

_“I am your commanding officer!”_

_“I’ll throw her letters into the sea if you talk about her one more time!”_

_Dum-ba-dum._

_“You stole my comb!”_

_“When did you last fucking wash?”_

_“Dog!”_

_“Pisspot!”_

_“Bastard!”_

_“I will fucking end you!”_

_Ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-_

Ares stirred.

Aphrodite snapped back to the present and snatched her hand back. She held herself stiller than a spider on a web. She bit her lip. 

Ares turned his face into his pillow and his back flexed. He snored softly.

Aphrodite released her breath. She thoughtfully folded the hand that had felt his heartbeat to her own heart. What an ugly clamour. The echoes of war in his pulse were never pretty, but they weren’t _ugly._ They were reverberating, golden tones of victory cheers and heroic acts and songs sung in comradeship. Or they were hushed and silver, the whispered words to longed-for homes, the stealing away in the night between new lovers, the vicious precision of strategising. Or they were the low cello moans of grief and the surging strains of fear turning to courage. But, these echoes were just… _ugly_. Petty and sordid and brutish, like the thick glug of boiling sludge in a humid swamp. 

She looked at him again, holding himself tight as a fist even in sleep.

She set her jaw and slipped from the bed.

*

Aphrodite’s library was the only room in the house that no one else was allowed to enter. She would introduce it to Eros when he was old enough, but for now it was for her expert eyes only. These were no ordinary books. These were her secret, special collection, delicate and darling and phenomenally dangerous. These were the books that recorded the hearts of every creature in the realms. No, more than recorded. These were their hearts. Aphrodite kept them carefully, poured over them, made annotations and corrections where it was necessary, stowed them away when they ended, stitched in new pages when they got too full. In this room, the love of every age was authored and edited and catalogued and conserved. She was the most thorough beta reader, the most discerning publisher, the most absorbed fan, and the dirtiest librarian the world would ever know. 

The library was at the very top of the house, in an attic room with a large, circular window that framed a full moon. It illuminated the maze of shelves, like draping gossamer. As she entered, a pale, rose-tinted light, emanating from nowhere and everywhere, glimmered into being and mixed with the moonlight, like chilli oil stirred into cream. She swept through the shelves in her long, satin dressing gown, her bare feet padding on the soft carpet. The books were a muted rainbow of leather and silk, weighting the air with a comforting, fabric, enclosed perfume. As she passed, she caught their whispers; pages fluttering with excitement, fresh ink dripping down the wooden shelves as new chapters bloomed to life, the mournful crinkling of old leaves no longer wanted, the harsh tearing of pages being cast away. 

She wound through labyrinthine paths, knowing her way instinctively. She was going to where she never allowed herself to go.

The centre of the library.

The Olympians.

She turned the final corner. The scent changed. The homey, heady leather was replaced by the honey and cardamom tang of ichor. No ordinary ink in the hearts of the gods. A large cabinet stood before her, more than two heads taller than her, the same dark wood as the shelves, but ostentatiously carved with images of the stars and sun and cycles of the moon in a hypnotic interlace. The carving caught the pink-tinged glimmer and almost seemed to rove around the cabinet’s body. It was fronted by two long panels of dark glass. Behind them were the Olympian manuscripts. 

Aphrodite slipped a key from her gown pocket and unlocked the cabinet. The doors creaked as she opened them cautiously. Her nose filled with that aromatic honey scent and her ears tingled. The whispers coming from these books were louder, like the rolls of distant thunder - ancient vows, present yearnings, as yet unspoken words.

_“You know I love Hera, right?”_

_“Don’t fuck with things you shouldn’t be fucking with. M’kay?”_

_“NOPE.”_

_“Because I want you!”_

She shook her head and tried to ignore them. It was too tempting being here, asking for trouble even she knew it wasn’t wise to give into. Her eyes scanned rapidly for the shelf devoted to her family.

_“MY APHRODITE?!”_

There he was. A thick, red volume, bursting at the seams, weighty like oak, the pages all creased and disordered, sticking out unevenly at the edges, the ichor leaking from it and blotching the crimson cover with gold. She wrapped her fingers around Ares’ tome and pulled it free, hefting it in her hands. She took a steadying breath against the writhing in her gut. She laid the book on her forearm and opened it.

Except she didn’t.

She tugged on the front cover and it resisted her.

_Huh?_

She looked at the edge with the muddled stack of pages.

_What in Cerberus’ kibble bowl is that doing there?_

The book was clasped closed with a thick, leather strap and a bulky, golden padlock.

_Oh, absolutely fucking not._

She jimmied her pinky around the padlock. It was firm. She knocked it against a shelf. It clanked but didn’t budge. 

_This was not authorised!_

She clamped her teeth down on the strap, splashed with spicy-sweet ichor, and wrenched it with her bite. It creaked, but stayed secure.

_Ares, not a single one of the books in this library is locked to me, least of all yours. I am going to get into this if it is the last. Fucking. Thing. I. Do!_

She shoved her fingers behind the strap, strained every muscle in her arm and ripped the leather with a vulpine shout. It made a loud, protesting noise, but the stitching to the back cover broke free and the book burst open. 

She almost toppled with the force of it, her dressing gown rippling around her legs. She caught herself and clutched the book as it fell open. Familiar verses flashed in burnished gold, dazzling in the moonlight.

_I miss my babies..._

_Aph is more beautiful than the sky..._

_One of these days, I’m going to kill my father..._

_Ma and Hebe need to leave…_

_Aph’s birthmark tastes sweeter than the rest of her skin..._

_Eros has gotten so big…_

_Aph lost her temper three days ago and I’m still fucking high…_

But the lines kept being lost. They were smeared and blotted over in a mess of hideous scrawl. The book looked like it had been vandalised. Grotesque images of howling faces and swarming crows and knotted serpents polluted the pages, among splatters of sour-smelling black ink. They were little more than doodles, but they were haunting, deranged, as if they had been more carved than drawn, by a satyr’s hooves at the peak of frenzy or the fingernails of a captive harpy. The nightmarish images leaped out at Aphrodite. The horrible noise in Ares’ heartbeat rose in her mind again and tumbled with a riot of wailing and snarling and hissing and squawking and jabbering. The ghastly images crowded her vision, somehow behind her eyes and in her blood, etching onto the inside of her skull, lancing her flesh, wheeling around her until she was so dizzy she couldn’t remember how to breathe. Her stomach lurched. 

_Hey!_ Her own inner voice whisked over the din. _Now is not the time to panic!_

She shook herself violently and almost threw the book across the floor. But she steeled herself, clung to it, cradled it. She was holding Ares, her Ares. 

_How did this happen? No one’s broken in and touched the books, I would know. This happened inside you, my love. How? What is this?_

She swallowed back rising bile and traced the open beak of a screeching crow over the words _I still sometimes think about marrying her._

She clutched the book in her strong fingers.

She snapped it shut and hurried from the library.

*

Eros was sleeping fitfully when the soft, rhythmic thud of knocking on his bedroom door roused him. His pulse kicked him awake, images of crying siblings coursing through his mind. He heaved himself out of bed and opened the door, yawning and rubbing his eyes.

“Momma?”

Momma stood in the hallway in her dark plum, satin dressing gown, her hair a mess and her mouth tight and her eyes enormous and shining fiercely. Huddled to her chest was a large, red book, the handmade sort with wonky pages, strange splotches of black and gold all over its edges, a torn leather strap hanging limply off it.

Eros frowned at the book, then met his mother’s eyes. She looked unsettlingly serious.

“I’m sorry to wake you.” She whispered. “This couldn’t wait.”

“Sure, it’s OK.” Eros said gently. “What’s up?”

“We need to talk.” 

Momma’s irises flared electric violet in the dimness and Eros was jolted truly awake with nerves and zeal. He drew himself up and squared his shoulders. His wings stirred under his skin.

“Baby Bear, it’s about your father.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The idea for Aphrodite's library came from these lines in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night:
> 
> Olivia: Where lies your text?  
> Viola: In Orsino’s bosom  
> Olivia: In his bosom? In what chapter of his bosom?  
> Viola: To answer by the method, in the first of his heart.
> 
> You didn't really need to know that, that scene just makes me happy.


	6. Fixing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aphrodite, Eros and Storge meet in the dead of night and work to fix Ares once and for all.
> 
> [Discussions of loved ones struggling to understand mental health.]
> 
> Once again, thank you to [Myth_is_a_Mirror](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Myth_is_a_Mirror/pseuds/Myth_is_a_Mirror) for beta reading! You MUST check out her *chef's kiss* Ares and more! Also extra thanks to her and to Haunting for workshopping magic with me and being unphased by the question "How does a sex goddess do a spell when her children are present?"

“So… this is his heart?” Eros swallowed and traced his fingertips gingerly down the crooked edges of the crimson book's pages, splattered with black and gold, like a miner’s shirt.

“Of sorts,” Momma replied tentatively, “Think of it more as a sort of doppelganger. It is his heart and isn’t. It echoes him, records him, but it’s also more tied to him, more alive, than an echo or a recording.”

Eros furled his fingers back into his palm. He glanced at Momma, sitting opposite him on his bed. They were both cross-legged, mirroring each other as per usual. This week just got more and more unsettling. Dad was all messed up, his siblings were unravelling over it, and now his Momma was keeping a bunch of hearts in the attic. And, Fates, this was one mighty chaotic household to stick that sort of collection on top of. Then again, it’s not as if anyone had ever found it. Come to think of it, had he even known they had an attic?

He huffed a steadying breath. 

“Momma,” Eros ventured carefully, “If this is Dad’s heart, it looks…” he searched for a delicate adjective, “Unwell.”

Momma’s eyes flickered amethyst, but she spoke steadily. “That’s why I’m showing you, Baby Bear. It’s not usually like this. The hearts of the gods are written in ichor. All this…” She gestured uncomfortably at the crowding, deranged doodles across the open pages, two serpents snapping their fangs at each other. “This is something wrong.”

Eros’ stomach cramped. Sweat broke out on his hands and under his arms, his temple ticked. He wanted to look away from the writhing, scratched graffiti, but it pulled him to it like a thug picking a fight. 

“I saw something like this too.” He spoke as the realisation was still slotting into place. “This afternoon, I was talking to Dad, trying to anyway, and I…” He hesitated, it was his turn to confess now. “I looked into his feelings.”

Momma perked up, her pristine fingernails spread on her satin-draped knee and glinted in the warm light from his bedside lamp. 

Eros made himself meet her expectant gaze. He’d developed this power last Winter, but it was new and unpredictable and he wasn’t great at interpreting what he saw. Everyone close to him had had a phase of being china cups of tea leaves, peered into and scrutinised by Eros, like a fairground fortune-teller. It had led to four panic attacks and six pretty explosive arguments. Momma had started teaching him how and when to use it, and had told him he ought to hold off on poking around in family auras until he had a better handle on things. 

“I don’t really know how to explain it,” he said, “But he was full of shadows, crazed shadows, flying around him in a sort of storm. But they looked like this.” He flicked his fingers at the book. 

Mother and son’s identical eyes moved to it at the same time. There was a strange stirring sound coming from it, almost like the noise of wind blowing over open bottles. Momma caressed the corner, stroking her thumb over creamy paper, just skirting a golden plume. It quietened. Eros watched her face, it’s strict strength turned worn and wistful. She looked older than she normally did. His heart pushed against his ribs, trying to reach out and pull her into the shield of his body. The day he’d realised he’d gotten bigger than Momma was a strange one, but it felt important somehow. 

_ Reporting for duty, remember? _

“OK.” He squared his shoulders and rubbed the back of his neck and flexed his hands. “Let’s think about what we know. Dad went away to the Mortal Realm. He never tells us where he’s going, ostensibly to protect military intelligence, but really because Gramps knows you think all his ideas are stupid and you’ll make Dad do something different.”

“That is not true,” Momma mumbled out of the corner of her mouth.

Eros raised an eyebrow at her. “Troy?”

“It was just good sense to change sides!” she snorted, “Your dad was all torn up about having to fight alongside his ridiculous father’s mistress’ kid, and the way Agamemnon’s sacrifices were going were making everyone uncomfortable, just poor taste. Plus, Paris and Hector may not have had Achilles’ prowess, but they were far more popular with women, and that’s where Zeus’ polls are low, so it was better for everyone if…” She trailed off as Eros’ eyebrow arched higher and disappeared into his tangle of unstyled quiff. 

“Anyway,” Eros continued, “We don't know where he’s been. But we do know it was for almost seven months, which is a pretty long time for what he had said was probably just a spring skirmish. Then he comes home and he’s distant and he’s down. He almost seems to be struggling to connect with reality, certainly with any of us.”

Momma nodded. Her brow creased and she smoothed it purposefully.

“Then I see his feelings are full of shadow creatures and you find them all over his heart… book… thing…”

She nodded again.

Eros leaned his chin in his hand and scratched the extremely unwelcome new zit on his cheek. 

Momma scooped her gush of lavender hair into a coil on her shoulder and bounced it.

Eros sucked on the corner of his mouth and stared at the dripping fang of a jagged inked snake.

Momma picked at her dressing gown ties.

“I really thought if I said it out loud, something would present itself to us,” Eros said, blowing frustratedly out of his nose.

Momma smiled weakly.

An idea struck him. “Look, you said you sometimes help people along with little edits, right? What if we just scrubbed this garbage out?” Eros reached for the book, tugging his navy pyjama sleeve down to rub the splattered black ink. 

Momma’s hands shot out and grabbed his and almost crushed the bones like birds’ eggs.

“Ow! Momma!”

“Don’t touch it, Eros!” she snapped urgently, “If you smudge the ichor, Fates only know the consequences! Actually, probably not even them.”

Eros went cold and tucked his fists under his arms and shrank from the book. It was almost as awkward being near it as it was being near the real Dad.

His bedroom door clicked and swished open.

Momma gasped and snapped the book shut and stuffed it under Eros’ lilac pillow, just as a small pink figure in turquoise pyjamas appeared in the doorway.

“Storge?” Eros swivelled to face his little brother and softened his expression. “What are you doing up, Buddy?”

Storge’s eyes were huge, like a bush baby’s. His new Eros-style quiff had got even more tangled than the original’s and his pyjama legs dragged on the floor, the waistband dropping a little on his narrow waist and the sleeves almost to his fingertips. Eros smiled at him encouragingly.

Storge shuffled into the room and pushed the door closed with a soft  _ thunk.  _ A pink stuffed mouse, the size of a rabbit, was huddled in one spaghetti arm. He cleared his throat and piped up nervously. “Um, permission to speak, General?” 

Eros looked to Momma.

Momma gave Storge a gentle, mischievous smile. “Marshmallow, I’ve told you, you never ask for permission to speak from someone bigger than you. You wait to be told to be quiet, and then you speak louder.” 

Storge smiled bashfully and glanced down at his submerged feet. 

Momma spread her long, graceful arm and he padded over to the bed and clambered into the opening. She tucked him into her warm body and rubbed his shoulder. “What’s up, my little sparkle?”

Storge leaned into her embrace, but he raised his delicate chin and spoke with an official, rehearsed tone. “General Momma, Captain Eros, I heard you were awake and I thought I should come talk to you now, while we could be alone.” His eyes shifted to the door, checking it was properly closed, then shifted back to them. “Private Squeakums and me have been conferning.”

Momma lifted her brows at Eros.

“Conferring,” he mouthed.

She nodded and looked back attentively at Storge. “I think you and Private Squeakums should have been sleeping.”

“With all due respect, General, we can’t sleep. Not as long as one of our troop is in need of rescue.”

_ Oh no… _

Eros knew what was coming. The crayon drawing of the Yellow Brick Poppa being hauled from the jaws of a monster flashed into his mind. His heart sank. He’d really hoped to keep this off Momma’s plate. He’d thought that wouldn’t be difficult at nigh on three in the morning.

“Rescue?” Momma asked.

Eros tried to catch her eye and signal for her to cut this off, but her gaze was all on Storge.

“Rescue.” Storge nodded. “After our conferning, it is me and Private Squeakums’ beliefs that Major Poppa never came home.”

Eros watched Momma’s face with his teeth grinding anxiously.

“Never came home, Marshmallow?”

“No.” Storge squared his shoulders. “His behaviour is not like Poppa at all. It is strange and not very nice. We think that the Poppa who lives with us is a shade, sent by a monster to trick us, and that the real Poppa is in prison by the monster.”

Momma’s face remained perfectly calm, but Eros saw her brow tighten and her hand close on Storge’s sleeve.

“I see. And Private Squeakums, you’re sure?”

Storge’s hand moved subtly and the mouse nodded, his button eyes gleaming with the zeal for a new heroic mission.

“Private Squeakums and me figured it out together,” Storge said proudly.

“You are my smartest soldiers.” Momma kissed the top of Storge’s head and patted between the mouse’s patchwork ears. Her eyes roved to the pillow with the book hidden beneath.

Eros’ aorta knotted. 

_ Poor baby, this is the worst. How am I supposed to explain? Dad’s sick with something, the kind of thing you can’t see, the kind of thing half the time people don’t even believe is real. How do you tell a child that? Everything looks like a monster at that age, when’s the right time to tell a kid that there’s more monsters inside of us than coming to get us out there? Gods, look at Momma’s face, she’s obviously wondering the same thing.  _

“Well…” Momma combed her long nails through her lavender waves and spoke thoughtfully to the creased patch of duvet between the three of them. “It’s a very good idea, but I’m not sure it’s exactly right.”

_ Shit, this is gonna suck. _

“I don’t think Major Poppa was kidnapped by a monster.”

_ “I think actually he’s had some kind of trauma. What’s a trauma, you say? Well, let’s see if we can find a fucking puppet show to sing about it.” Maybe if I wish hard enough, the bed will turn into a blancmange and swallow me whole. _

“I think it’s more likely to have been a magician.”

_ I’m sorry, what now? _

Eros’ eyes snapped wide at his Momma and his head tilted like a startled parakeet.

“A magician?” Storge tilted his head too.

Momma shot her eyes to Eros and they were bright and serious. “Don’t you think, Baby Bear?”

_ Momma, it is weird to humour kids’ fantasies by correcting nonsense details. _

“Sure?” Eros spread his hands a little helplessly.

“Because I think your observations are very intelligent, Private.” Momma began talking fast, the way she did when she was onto something, when she was planning something. “But, I think there’s one tiny flaw.”

Storge straightened his back sternly to show he was paying perfect attention.

Momma rubbed his arm rapidly as her speech sped up again. “Rather than Poppa’s body being in prison and his shade here with us, I think Poppa’s body is home, but his spirit is being held prisoner inside it. Does that make sense, Marshmallow?”

Storge’s wiggly eyebrows said otherwise, but he nodded.

“So, what we need to do, rather than go and fight with a scary monster, is to break whatever curse the evil magician put on Poppa to lock his spirit up,” Momma explained.

Storge nodded again. So did Private Squeakums. Eros looked with concern at the eager button eyes and then at the pillow hiding the book.

Momma shuffled Storge in the cradle of her arm and looked into his eyes with an alarming sparkle. “Marshmallow, I’m going to ask you a very important question and I need you to tell me the truth.”

Storge saluted.

“Have you done any crying over Major Poppa since he’s been home?”

Storge looked briefly stricken and Eros’ heart lurched. 

“I…” Storge’s fine, sweetpea mouth trembled. “A little bit,” he answered quietly.

_ Shit. Body blow. _

“That’s very good.”

_ Huh? _

“Did you save any tissues from when you did?”

_ This is… weird… _

Storge bit his thumbnail. “I… I think maybe I have one under my pillow.”

Momma looked thrilled, white lightning crackled in her pupils. “Good boy! Will you go and fetch that tissue for Momma?”

Storge gave her a quizzical look, but hopped dutifully off the bed and scurried from the room. 

Eros leaned forward and glared at Momma with his wings itching under his skin. His voice came in a pressing hiss. “OK, the curse line was gold, I was starting to freak myself out imagining him running away on some monster hunt. But what are you doing making him rummage around in his used tissues like a sad racoon?”

“Storge’s tears are a key ingredient for breaking the curse,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Oh!” Eros flapped his hand in relief. “Smart. We’ll soak the tissue in some soda, say some spooky mumbo-jumbo, Storge thinks he’s broken this ‘curse’...” He made air quotes with his fingers. “And then we can sit down and talk about what kind of doctor Dad needs.”

Momma snorted like a horse sniffing ragwort. “Doctor? He doesn’t need a doctor.” Momma’s face had broken into a manic smile, her cheeks flushed violet and her hair stirring to life.

Eros drew back warily. “Momma, we were looking at the same book, right? Dad’s got something emotional going on. It’s in his heart, after all.”

“If it was a part of his heart,” she chattered insistently, like a jackdaw, “It would be in ichor. But it’s not, it’s in ink, the ink that writes in mortal books.”

Eros frowned.

“I’m serious, Eros. Storge is onto something, but for that one detail. I think a mortal magician has cursed our Ares.”

Her words came to Eros as if through the echo in a cave, not quite heard, not quite real.

“Momma, you can’t mean that.”

“I can absolutely mean that.” She kicked her legs out and bounced along the mattress close to him, buffeting him with the scent of paper and Dad’s cheap, tacky shower products. She gripped his shoulders and her fingernails stuck his flesh through the cotton of his top. 

Eros looked into Momma’s face gravely. Her feelings were in free-fall, her aura teemed pink devotion and yellow fear and a fizzing stream of black purpose serpentined around, gathering the colours in swirls and clumps that immediately spiralled out of its grasp. 

“Momma,” he said tenderly, “I know it’s really scary to think that something might be up with Dad that we don’t have all the power to fix…”

She snapped her fingers sharply in front of his face to silence him. “Nonsense. This is difficult for you to really understand, Baby Bear. But one day you will find someone like this.” She stroked his face, but her fingernails curled, sharp. “A very lucky someone. And you’ll know that person inside out. It will be as if they’re an extension of your own body. When you meet that person and you share your life with them, and they with you, you will understand this intuition I have for your father.” She sucked her lips into a hard line. “I can always fix Ares, Baby. Always.” 

White lightning webbed her pupils again. As it faded away the liquid pools of her eyes had petrified dark and hard. Eros’ guts tied into one of those elaborate bows they put around bouquets at fancy florists. 

“Momma, I think, maybe, you’re a little close to it all and…”

“I got a tissue!” Storge skittered back into the room, Squeakums clutched in one hand, a ragged tissue in the other.

Momma beamed at him, dazzling as an arrow catching the midday sun. “Well done!” 

She grasped Storge’s bamboo-frame shoulder and Eros’ dense upper arm. She ducked her head conspiratorially between them, her canines emerging from her bubblegum pout. 

“My boys, who’s ready to break a curse?”

*

The bubbling of the saucepan hummed through Eros’ veins. The three of them stood like a purple buddleia bush around the stove top, Storge on his tip-toes on a chair to bring him up to Eros’ height, Eros’ large hand on his back to keep him steady. Storge’s eyes glowed magenta as they peeked eagerly into the saucepan. 

Momma picked up a sprig of myrtle, her special flower, from the counter and deftly drew her lethal fingernails up the stem, strimming away the leaves and petals. She scattered them into the boiling water and they floated and crinkled on the surface, the steam pluming with their peppery scent. The kitchen’s refreshing, gentle aroma threaded into the myrtle; mint, rosemary, sage, bayleaf and cinnamon sticks. It soothed Eros instinctively, even as he watched his mother and brother with his fingertips prickling nervously.

The more he thought about it, the more three Love Gods magically tampering with a War God at 3:30 in the morning seemed like a bad idea. Momma made a good point, the horrible drawings all over Dad’s heart were in mortal ink, and that could mean something nefarious. But Dad wasn’t some blithe innocent floating blissfully through life. Dad had his shit, wrapped up in both Olympus and the Mortal Realm, and maybe something had been done to him, some spell or poison or bad wish, but, well, Dad didn’t exactly need an external factor to mess with his head. 

“What exactly will this do to him?” Eros asked hesitantly.

“I told you, Baby Bear, break the curse,” Momma replied without looking at him, wafting some steam into her pert nose to sniff the simmer. 

“But, how exactly?”

“As Storge so cleverly figured out,” Momma said, patting Storge’s head, “The problem with Poppa is imprisonment. This is an enchantment to break his spirit out.”

Storge swivelled his steam-flushed face to Eros and beamed excitedly. Momma normally kept magic out of sight. It was something really special not only to see it, but to be able to help.

_ All the kid ever wants to do is help. _

“Breaking out sounds…” Eros grit is teeth. “Dramatic.”

“Dramatic?”

“Violent.”

Momma waved her hand dismissively at him and a cloud of peppery steam buffeted his face.

“It’s fine, Baby Bear, Poppa can handle it.”

_ Yeah, sure, this week has proven without a doubt that what Poppa’s real good at is handling stuff. _

“Alright.” Momma put her hands on her hips and tossed a few loose lavender strands out of her face. “I think it’s ready to start adding ingredients. Marshmallow, can I have that tissue?”

Storge handed Momma his crumpled, tear-soaked tissue as if it were a butterfly made of glass. She plucked it from his palm and dropped it into the water, where it bloomed drenched and disintegrated, strings of white mulch wriggling in the swell like minnows.

Next, Momma took a sealed bottle of garnet wine from the counter.

“What’s that?” Eros asked.

She uncorked it with a squeak and a pop. “It’s the bottle of wine from our first official date. We never got round to opening it and then ended up just keeping it as a sort of trophy.” She smirked and her eyes glittered. Eros rolled his eyes, but couldn’t hold back a chuckle. 

She tilted the fluting, glimmering bottle over the saucepan and a steady stream of molten, bloodied copper plunged through the steam, kicking up clouds, and pierced the water. The bubbling snarled and the potion surged dark red. A pungent, alcoholic, fruity aroma burst from the boiling. 

Momma stopped the bottle with a chic little steel topper and pushed it aside. Her gaze fell on Eros, her eyes mystical, fractured charoite through the plumes. “Now something from you.”

Storge teetered a little and stared at Eros as Eros’ hand trembled on his back.

“Wh-what do you need?”

Momma’s crystallised eyes softened again, pleading pools that Eros could never say no to. “Baby Bear, Storge put in his grief, to tell his spirit the wrong that’s happened and make it angry. I put in our past, to remind the spirit what he once was. You, you’re Ares’ present, his future, his legacy, the physical tie to this plain. You remind his spirit why it needs to break free.” 

She said it all levelly, but Eros could hear a waver behind it. She was asking for something she didn’t want to ask for. She was breaking her own vow, that her children would never have to sacrifice.

“Blood,” Eros stated calmly.

Momma’s throat pulsed as she swallowed. She nodded.

Eros took a deep breath. His head filled with herbs and humid heat. 

_ Ares’ boy. War child. _

He rubbed his hand on the comforting flannel of Storge’s pyjama shirt. Squeakums’ button-eye caught the red reflection of the potion.

_ Look, in the end, either they’re wrong or they’re right. If they’re right, then this fixes everything. If they’re not, then at least they feel better and we all get some damn sleep before dawn. _

“Storge,” Eros said softly, “Could you close your eyes, please?”

Storge’s large, anxious eyes closed and he bowed his head seriously. Eros squeezed his shoulder in reassurance and moved his hand away. 

“I… I have a sterilised needle,” Momma said in a small voice.

“No.” Eros flexed his fingers. “If it’s for Dad, I know what I need to use.”

He fluttered his hand and he was suddenly holding an arrow, a long golden shaft tipped with a flourish of pink feathers and a golden, heart-shaped head coming to a keen, gleaming point. He sucked in his lips and rolled his tongue back in his mouth, his stomach clenching. He rolled his shoulders and huffed out through his teeth. He pricked his index finger on the arrow.

“Ah!”

He hissed and flinched. The pain was minor but it was sharp and flashed through his taut skin. The arrow vanished in a pink shimmer. He hovered his finger over the steam and massaged it with his thumb so three glistening globules of blood oozed out and plummeted into the mixture. It gurgled and spat and a drop of boiling water flicked his wound. He snatched his hand back and stuck the smarting pad of his index in his mouth.

“I can heal it,” Momma offered.

“I’m fine,” Eros responded a little testily around his finger.

Storge peeked and Eros nodded that he was safe to open his eyes.

“What now, Momma?” Storge squeaked.

“Now,” Momma said, placing a pizza baking tray over the saucepan, the steam curling through the holes, “I’m going to steam my special spellbook in the potion vapours.” She looked at her sons with gravitas. “We all need to think about Poppa. We need to focus on all our favourite memories of him, all the things we love about him, and all that love will go into the potion and give his spirit the strength it needs to break free. Do you understand?”

Eros understood. Infuse the steam with what should be in Dad’s heart and cleanse the book with it. 

_ Alright. Here goes nothing. _

Momma carefully drew the crimson book from the huge pocket of her dressing gown and placed it on the pizza tray. The steam wound around it, like the vapours at Delphi. The wine and pepper and metallic scent tingled in Eros’ throat.

He breathed it in and let his mind clear.

Over the brush of mint and rosemary on the windowsill, dusted with soil from their pots, the stars twinkled and shreds of grey-blue cloud drifted across them, like mourning veils over the eyes of widows. 

The house fell unusually quiet, but for the humming of the saucepan.

Eros’ vision filled with red-tinted steam.

_ “You gotta ask him out, Kiddo, I can’t keep seeing you like this.” Dad’s massive hand claps Eros’ adolescent shoulder so hard it shakes his ribs. _

_ “Dad! You don’t get it!” Eros fires an arrow and it arcs through the air and bounces off the edge of the target, set up squatly between a rhododendron bush and the vegetable patch. “See? I am NOT cool enough for Icarus, OK? He’s like this huge daredevil, everyone loves him, he can do all these stunts. I may be divine, but I also wear pastels and drink bubble tea. It’s not gonna happen.” _

_ Dad rubs the back of his neck. Eros mimics him and pretends that isn’t what he’s doing. _

_ “Son, take it from a guy who’s been fucking around with masculinity for too many centuries. It’s a mess and it’s hard to handle, and sure there’s some cool shit in there, but mostly it’s a fucking burden. I’m willing to bet Icarus, more than anyone else you know, would kill for a break from being the stuntman to just go out for some pastel bubble tea. Pull the string to your eye, not your nose.” Dad carefully adjusts the position of Eros’ hand on his cheek and the bowstring draws tighter, quivering with their combined contained strength. “Why do you think I’m so into your Ma?” _

_ “Because she’s pretty and she’s nicer to you than you deserve.” Eros fires and the arrow thunks into the left half of the target. _

_ Dad claps him on the back. “Mind your manners. But, yes. And hey, you know who else is pretty and nicer to people than they deserve?” _

_ Eros shrugs sullenly. “No.” _

_ “Yes, you do, you fucking beautiful kid. I’d put good money on Icarus having gross teenager thoughts about you as we speak.” _

_ “Dad! You’re the worst at this!” _

_ “I know, I know.” Dad spins Eros around and ducks to meet his eyes and his gaze has the soft brilliance of tiger lilies and his warmth spreads in the inches between them. “Shot to the heart, remember? I give it a year before I’m standing at our garden gate with a spear, defending your honour from every hero dumbass with an ego and a pair of wax wings.” _

_ Eros’ face warms, his chest warms, his stomach unknots. “You really think so?” _

_ “I know so.” _

_ Eros smiles. _

_ Dad straightens up. _

_ They both rub the backs of their necks. _

_ Dad clears his throat. “For the record, I don’t like those wings, they don’t look safe.” _

_ “I knooow. Gods, Dad.” _

_ “And don’t tell your Ma I swore, or I’m fucked.” _

_ “I know.” _

_ “OK. Next arrow.” _

_ Bullseye. _

Eros’ chest rose and fell in the rhythm of the boiling water.

Storge tucked his hands up into his pyjama sleeves and tugged on the threads around the hem, concentrating hard so he didn’t topple off the chair with his eyes closed. The potion smelled like the kind of thing Momma would say he wasn’t old enough to have.

_ Storge comes tottering on stumpy little pre-school legs from the stall of the boy’s bathroom in the mall. He flaps his hands up at the sink at the height of his nose. Large, warm hands circle his narrow waist and Poppa makes a funny grunting sound as he lifts Storge up to wash his hands.  _

_ “Whoah! What have you been eating? So heavy!” Poppa’s voice is big and silly. _

_ Storge giggles. “I’m not heavy!” _

_ “You are SO heavy! Oh no, I can’t hold you!”  _

_ Poppa drops him and catches him before he can fall. His tummy shoots up into his chest and then drops back down and sloshes. He squeals in fright, but it turns into giggling so hard it feels like soda up his nose. _

_ A huge, blue cyclops, even huger than Poppa, lumbers from the next sink over to the hand dryer.  _

_ It clicks on. _

_ The noise is horrible. It’s like a monster. It’s inside Storge’s body, shaking him up until it feels like he’s frothing inside. It roars like a hundred lions. _

_ Storge screams. He screams and screams and screams. He’s so terribly afraid and shocked, it’s all he can do. _

_ The cyclops hurries out. But the dryer doesn’t stop. Poppa uses a lot of bad words, as he waves wildly at the dryer. But it won’t stop. Storge screams. _

_ “Hey! Hey, Buddy!” Poppa’s denim knees bend and his face sinks into view, blurred through tears like a sunset through rain. “Hey, you know what? You’re doing the exact right thing right now. You know why?” _

_ Storge pants and shakes his head, his voice still kicking out tendrils of scream. _

_ “Because if something’s really loud and we can’t make it be quiet, we can just be louder than it! Beat it at its own game, right Buddy?” _

_ Storge doesn’t understand what that means, but Poppa looks like he has a plan, which helps. _

_ Poppa screams. _

_ Storge silences, bemused. _

_ The dryer roars. It’s awful. _

_ “We’re being louder than it, yeah?” _

_ “What?” _

_ “AAAAAAAAAHHHHH!” _

_ “Oh! Aaaaaahhh!” _

_ “Like you mean it, Marshmallow! AAAAAAAAHHHHHH!” _

_ “AAAAAAAaaaahhh!” _

_ “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!” _

_ “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!” _

_ And now screaming doesn’t feel like scared screaming. It’s strong screaming. It’s funny screaming. Poppa’s face is red as a strawberry and his teeth are pointy and his hair is messy and his big, big arms have swooshed out and Storge can’t even see the horrible metal mouth of the dryer. He and Poppa are soaring on their screams. _

_ Later Momma asks why they didn’t just walk out of the bathroom.  _

_ Poppa puts his arm around Storge and says, “Your Momma wasn’t there, she can’t understand what we went through.” _

_ Momma calls him silly and makes everyone milkshakes. _

Storge lifted Private Squeakums up under his chin and nuzzled his face into the pink tuft of fur between the ears.

Aphrodite stilled her body. The sound and the colour and the churning from the saucepan brought the blood-flow river of Ares' wound back into her mind. She pushed it away. She needed a good memory. Her strongest one. The moment that best encapsulated everything she felt for this impossible man, every wonderful, tortuous thing. She thought about the way they kissed, the way they danced, the way they fought, the way they fell asleep with their children on the couch, the way they had picnic-packing down to an art. Snippets and snatches flurried behind her eyes, like a startled shoal of tropical fish. 

_ “I can’t do this.” _

The memory of her own voice rose above the noise, like the echo of a penny dropped into a well.

_ “What do you mean you can’t do this?” _

Ares’ voice. His perfect, paprika voice.

_ They sit on their bed, propped on the pillows. His long, sandstone-hewn body stretched out and glimmering on the dark sheets. She curls into his heat, her head nestling into the furrow just beneath his collar, her fingers skating around the dimples of his abs. _

_ She mumbles into his muscle. “I can’t be a Love Goddess for all those people, and protect Cyprus, and spend the time with Sappho that she needs, and keep making peace with your mother and TGOEM, and build a real life with you, and have a baby. I just can’t, it’s too much.” _

_ Ares’ oak-bough arm wraps her and she feels like she’s being scooped into a giant’s pocket. _

_ “Soda Pop,” his voice rumbles in his chest, vibrating on her cheek. “Early pregnancy is going to make you feel a lot of things. But come on, you can do anything.” _

_ “No.” Aphrodite pushes herself up to meet his eyes, dark carnelians looking levelly into her face. “I always thought that, but this is too big. How am I supposed to handle something like this? I was spat out of the sea by a murderer, fully grown and abandoned. I don’t know what it was like to be a child, I don’t know what it’s like to have a parent, how am I meant to be a mother and everything else? I’m not strong enough, Ares. I’m not smart enough. I’m not… I’m not anything enough.”  _

_ The bump of her belly pushes her further from his body than she wants to be. _

_ Ares’ stern brow lowers and shadows his burning eyes. “I thought you wanted children. Tons of them.” _

_ Aphrodite can feel the threat of tears compressing her chest. She feels fragile, like she might shatter if she takes too deep a breath. “I did. But I don’t deserve them. I can’t handle them.” _

_ Ares holds her eye. He doesn’t snap. He doesn’t plead. He doesn’t dismiss. He searches her face for a long, quiet moment.  _

_ He removes his arm from her and slides off the bed.  _

_ She goes cold. His absence is like a blizzard. She huddles around her belly and shivers, tensing every muscle in her face to hold the tears back. _

_ Ares goes to the dresser and opens the top drawer, the sliding wood shushing in the silence. He takes something out and walks with purpose back to the bed. He sinks down onto his knees on the sheets, facing her squarely. His brow is still low, but smooth. His eyes smoulder. His mouth is flat and serious. He lifts his hands to his neck and his biceps mound as he fiddles at the nape. When he lowers his hands to his lap he is wearing a thick, black, leather collar, with a chunky red-gold ring at the front and a heavy buckle at the back. _

_ “Say the thing you always say when you put this on me.” She can feel his whisper in the pads of her fingers and toes. _

_ The tears inch closer to the surface. She gulps them back and speaks tentatively. “This means that you’re mine. I own you. I own your body. I can bend you to my will.” Her voice shakes, she focuses her flooding eyes on the sturdy leather. “It means you are my treasure, and my pet, and my slave, and I can do what I want with you, but it will always make you happy. It means my pleasure is yours. It means you’re bound to me. It means all of that, even when you take it off.” _

_ Ares smiles. “So, if you can make all that true of the God of War himself, with just a little ring of leather, then imagine what your marvellous might can do with some little, squishy baby.” He reaches out and folds his hands over hers on her belly, his long fingers virtually covering the bump, splaying and protecting it like a rib cage. “And what’s more,” he continues, his deep voice rimmed with a sandpaper scuff in his rough whisper, “It means you have that God of War by your side, every minute of every day, completely crazy over you, totally devoted, ready to do absolutely anything you ask. You are enough for him, you deserve everything of him, and all he wants is for you to use him exactly as you need. To give you pleasure, to give you rest, to protect you, to hold you up, to wait on you hand and fucking foot. Your wish is my command, Goddess of Love.” _

_ The tears overflow. They cascade down her face, they burn and drench and it’s ugly and embarrassing. She sniffs and drags her arm across her nose and a string of mucus clings to the back of her hand and she sobs.  _

_ But they’re good tears. They’re happy tears. So, so happy. _

_ She heaves her new weight forward and he brings her into his lap, straddling him and enclosed in his arms, nestled in him like a butterfly in a chrysalis. He chuckles at the mess of her face and cups her chin. He strokes his thumbs over her cheeks to dry them. He gazes into her eyes like he’s watching fireworks. _

_ She combs one hand into the cotton of his hair and loops her other two fingers into the red-gold hoop and thumbs it like a talisman. It is warm in her hand and tactile and hard, certain, grounding.  _

_ Her belly bumps his abs and it doesn’t feel in the way, it feels like they are two lush leaves folded around a flower bud. _

_ His hands graze down her back. _

_ Their kiss carries her to paradise. _

Aphrodite poked her tongue from between her teeth and tasted wine and honeyed ichor on the steam.

She opened one eye. Ares’ heart book was shrouded in steam, the protruding uneven pages crinkling at the edges. The boys were silent, but for their breathing in the same rhythm of the boiling water. 

“OK,” she murmured, “Repeat after me.”

They nodded, eyes still closed. Aphrodite spoke and their soft voices echoed her under the rumble of the bubbling.

“Break,

Break,

Spirit,

You are free,

We shatter your cage,

With love, stronger than bronze, than fire,

We tear down the walls,

So you may

Come home,

Break,

Break.”

The water rushed and the steam jetted and hissed. Storge almost toppled from his perch and Eros recoiled, his hair bouncing on his brow. The boys clutched each other’s arms and stared.

Aphrodite waved her hand and the rushing silenced and the steam dissipated. She turned off the stove and carefully lifted the warm tray with the book on it and laid it to the side. The potion whispered, deep rose red and sprinkled with dark, curling leaves, white petals, and tiny, glassy bubbles. She plucked a ladle hanging overhead and dipped it into the saucepan and lifted a scoop up to her nose. Sharp, but rich. Perfect. She picked up a small, open jar, one of those ones that sits in the palm of your hand and once contained some artisanal chutney they won’t sell in real servings. She carefully poured the ladle out into the jar. The glass misted with the heat and warmed in her hand. She screwed the lid on.

“What’s that for?” Eros asked. “I thought we were just cleansing the book.”

“This is just an extra measure,” Aphrodite answered, “If he drinks it, it intensifies the effect.”

“And that will fix Poppa?” Storge piped from where he leaned on Eros’ shoulder.

Aphrodite looked keenly into the ruby glow of the jar. “Absolutely.”

Above them, Ares stirred in his sleep.


	7. Breaking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ares fights to contain the feelings that have been building up intensely inside him, finally reaching breaking point.
> 
> [This chapter opens with some descriptions of gore and throughout depicts severe anxiety, low self-worth, and struggles with anger. If you're following the story, but this is a bit much, I've put a plot summary in the chapter end notes so you can skip.]
> 
> And once more hats off to star beta reader, [Myth_is_a_Mirror](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Myth_is_a_Mirror/pseuds/Myth_is_a_Mirror)! A true blessing from the Gods!

_ This is a nightmare. This is just a nightmare. None of this is real. _

Ares stumbled along the beach, littered with contorted, bleeding bodies, their gore the only stark colour in an otherwise decay-grey landscape, the brown of their hair and the green of their eyes had drained into the grit and vanished. He was breathing heavily, he wasn’t breathing at all. Sand caked his body so every movement stung. The sea was a rolling, ink-black expanse, into which a sun sank from a grey sky, a vast, monstrous red eye, like a torn out heart. 

_ This… this can’t be real. _

“Define real, Honey Bear.”

Ares wheeled around. Aphrodite was walking towards him out of the dark waves, her colour gone too, her dress clinging to her with the water, her hair sleek, her eyes blank.

“What… what do you mean, Aph?”

It was strange, she was walking but somehow not reaching him, perpetually in the sea foam.

“Well, Honey Bear. Maybe this place isn’t real. But there are things here you know to be true.”

Ares’ heart flew into a chaotic drumbeat, he felt sick. “Like what?”

“Like how barren your world is. How ugly. So full of violence and horror.” Aphrodite sneered at the carnage around him. “Like how disgusted I am by it. Like how I never loved you.”

Ares’ middle yawned with gaping hollowness. “That’s…” He pushed against it. “That’s not true.” 

“Oh, but it is.” 

“No.”

“It’s alright. You never loved me either.”

“That’s not true!”

Ares lurched forward, he tried to run into the sea, to catch her in his arms and shake them both awake. But he didn’t go anywhere.

_ This is a nightmare. This isn’t real. I won’t believe it. _

Aphrodite looked away, austere and bored and cold. That cold seeped into the grotesque hollowness taking over his insides. 

“Then, what’s this?” She held up her hand. Looped around her fingers was a fine chain, webbing a bleeding, dripping heart that swung like a pendulum from her fingers, the same gore red that was the only visible colour for miles. It drizzled its raw blood into the sea, its ventricles bulged in the binding under the weight of a heavy, fat padlock.

Ares’ teeth chattered, he trembled and sand dusted from his legs. “I… I had to.”

“You locked your heart, Honey Bear.” Aphrodite’s bland voice laced venomous. “You can’t feel love.”

Ares choked, his eyes scalded with tears. “Please, Aph, please! I had to! To protect you! I did it because I love you! I love you more than anything!”

“No.” Aphrodite sighed impassively, her blank eyes roved over the severed organ dangling like a purse from her elegant hand. “That doesn’t sound right.”

“Does it even matter?” 

Another voice sounded to Ares’ right. He whirled to it and reeled back as he saw Eros’ face an inch from his own. Eros’ eyes weren’t blank like his mother’s, they were that sickening blood red and they were furious and pained.

“Love or not, it doesn’t make him any good for anything,” Eros said.

Ares fought not to crumple into the viscera pooling around his feet. The pungency of rotting flesh stormed into his senses.

“It’s OK, Dad.” Eros cocked his head to one side, his voice dark and resentful. “No one could have expected you to be any different from your old man. You never learned how to love, so how could we ever love you?” 

The undertow of the sea growled.

Ares’ breath froze and shattered in his throat. “That’s not true! Eros, Kiddo, you taught me, you all taught me, you meant I loved like no God has ever loved. Baby Bear, this family is my heart, it’s…” He choked and his words turned to wisps of carbon dioxide. 

“Some heart!” Aphrodite’s callous laugh flayed him. She shook the imprisoned organ, so blood splattered the hem of her dress and the corner of her mouth.

Eros cocked his head to the other side, it was an eerie gesture. “Yeah, some heart.”

“Eros, please!” Ares flung his hands forward and grasped Eros’ face.

Eros screamed.

It was a horrible scream. It gashed the air, it rippled the sea, it clawed Ares’ eardrums. Ares leaped back and saw two hideous, warping, bubbling burns bursting across Eros’ neck and cheeks where Ares had touched him. Eros taloned his hands and hunched and wailed in agony.

“Eros, I’m so sorry!” Ares cried.

“See?” Aphrodite said drily. “You’re toxic, Ares. You’re acidic.”

“It’s just right now.” Ares jabbered helplessly, his gaze flying between her disdain and Eros’ writhing. “Something’s got inside me and it’s made me like this, that’s why I had to lock myself away, look what could happen! Fuck, Eros, I’m so -”

“Ha!” Aphrodite threw her head back and yapped in incredulity. “Something?  _ Something?  _ Who are you kidding, Ares? You were always like this.”

He rounded on her and his voice came shredded and panicked. “Why are you saying these things!”

Aphrodite fixed him with a murderous gaze. She raised the heart higher and clamped the padlock with her free fingers.

Ares went hoarse. “No…”

“If this rotten thing is worth more than the butcher’s cost of the meat, which I doubt, why don’t you…” 

“No!”

“...prove it.”

She wrenched the lock away. It flashed in the red sunlight as it was cast into the sea, the chains flying behind it in whipping tails. Ares’ chest erupted in pain. He collapsed onto all fours and wretched and clutched the screeching, roaring pain under his pectoral, every bone in his body buckling. 

“Aphrodite, please!” he hacked.

“Free yourself, Ares!” Aphrodite called out to the sky, holding his heart aloft so it dripped blood onto her face, the sea swirling around her. “ If you’re going to be ugly, you could at least try not being pathetic! Let’s have the monster if we can’t have the man!” 

“NO!” 

_ It’s a nightmare, wake up! Wake up! You just need to get home! Wake up! _

“Shadow monsters!”    


Ares raised his head and saw Storge stood a few feet down the beach, staring at him in terror, his oversized pyjamas flapping in the wind off the sea. 

“Storge?” Ares coughed. “There’s no monsters, Baby, go back to bed.”

“No!” Storge whined, tears filling his grey eyes. “Shadow monsters!” He pointed directly at Ares. “There!” 

And then Ares could feel them. A forest of beasts rioting under his skin, stampeding in his blood. Rage. Grief. Hatred. Sickness. Fear. 

_ Wake up! _

Storge turned and ran, pelting down the beach, kicking viscera up from his heels.

_ Wake up! _

“Storge!” Ares thrust his arm forward, a jet of flame shot from it after his son. “NO!”

_ WAKE UP! _

Ares tore violently from sleep. 

For a split second he thought he was still dreaming. The bed clothes around him were on fire. A flame lashed his arm and with a jolt of horror he realised this was real.

“SHIT!” 

He bounded from the bed, grabbed the bed clothes frantically into a bundle, threw them to the floor and stamped on them furiously. 

“ShitShitShitShit!”

The flames sputtered out. The ruined sheets smoked miserably in a heap at his feet. 

He caught his breath and buried his face in his hands. His pulse pounded sonorously in his ears. He sucked air through his fingers and waited for the panic to rein in a little. The adrenaline oozed out of his muscles into his stomach, leaving him heavy and nauseous. His body slowed. He groaned into his palms.

“Shit.”

The door swished. Ares snapped his eyes up to it, his heart kicking his sternum. Aphrodite sneaked into the room and started, seeing him up and the bed clothes on the floor. The faintest mist-blue glimmer of dawn crept through the gap in the curtains to dimly light the room, the scent of smoking fabric suddenly felt thick and pervasive.

She tugged her dressing gown closer around her. “You set the bed on fire.”

Ares opened his mouth, but no words came out. He nudged his foot in front of the heap.

“You've not done that in years.” 

He couldn’t sense any anger from her. It was somehow worse that way. He couldn’t read her face in the darkness or her voice in it’s forced calm. The echo of her heart-breaking tone in the dream haunted his ears.

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

A thin thread of warm humour wove through Aphrodite’s response, it pulsed against the nightmare version of her weighing on him. “I'd be mad, but these are the sheets I was going to replace anyway, can't get the stain out from that massage oil you surprised me with.”

She walked towards him through the shadow, the hem of her satin robe rippling at her feet like sea water. When she took his hands, the riotous feeling under his skin resurged and he tensed painfully against it. He kept his fingers hard and straight, not curling them around hers, not pulling her close to him as he desperately longed to do.

“Nightmare, my prince?” she asked softly.

Her eyes were illuminated by the hint of dawn, her deep pupils cupped by light and blooming wide and open to him. She was so punishingly beautiful, how could she care about something like him? He tried to push the thought back, but it lingered in the back of his mouth like bad beer. 

He shrugged. “Must have been.”

“You don’t remember?”

Remember? Every detail was tattooed across his nervous system. 

He shook his head.

She stroked her thumbs over the backs of his hands. The easy tenderness of her touch cloaked him in stinging nettles. He yearned for more, the image of wrapping her in his arms and tumbling into her kiss looped in his mind like a broken record, but every time it played it brought a fresh wave of disturbance in his blood and his hands itched with the memory of the burns on Eros’ face and the flames shooting towards Storge. He puffed the acrid scent of the smoking sheets from his nostrils.

_ You’re toxic, Ares. You’re acidic. _

“Want to go downstairs?” Aphrodite said with too much sweetness, her hair sweeping over one side of her face in a watercolour stroke. “I'll give you a neck rub and make you some cocoa, that always helps.”

Something wheedled in his ear.  _ “If she touches you, you’ll break. And then it will all come spilling out. All of it.” _

Ares’ shoulders hardened to oak. He pulled his hands from her and they retreated into his abdomen. “N-no.”

She frowned. “No?”

“No.” He scratched his elbow and stammered, looking vaguely around. “I'll... I'll just... It's not long til dawn, I'll get dressed.”

Aphrodite put her hands on her hips, her mouth puckering like a displeased pansy. “Ares, it's 4am.”

Ares gruffed in his throat and scratched his chest. “Military body clock. I think I'm gonna get out of the house today, do some workouts, tire myself out.”

Aphrodite perked up a little. “Oh. Running with Hermes or weights with Athena?”

He scratched his thigh, his skin was so uncomfortable. “Neither.”

The perk vanished. “Sunbeam, you don't want to overwork yourself on three hours sleep. Come back to bed, we'll just hop into the guest room.” 

She reached out to take his hands again, his body went concave away from her as his stomach hissed. 

He spoke hastily. “Really, I'd rather get some air. You go to the guest room, I'll tidy this up and head out. See you at dinner.” He kicked the sheets behind him.

“Ares…”

She reached more earnestly and took a solid step towards him. His body flared with terror. He saw her skin covered in furious welts and burns. His skin crawled, sweat iced his neck. He stumbled backward and almost fell over the mound of bedding. 

“Could you not?” he snapped.

She stopped in her tracks. Her eyes fluttered wide and sparkled wet. Her long, graceful fingers furled closed like a startled anemone. A cinnamon sprinkle of her anger touched his tongue. He sucked on it needily.

He shook himself and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I...I'm still sparking. I need to get out of here.”

He strode past her, wilfully ignoring her scent as he brushed too close. He tugged the dresser open violently and it rattled. He rummaged around, grabbing underwear, sweatpants and a hoodie. He pulled them on in a blind hurry, the shuffle of fabric drowning out another attempt by Aphrodite to persuade him to stay. His head popped out of the hoodie and he wrenched it down over his torso and swept past her, out of the bedroom and down the stairs. His heart raced, his palms were slick with clamminess, his head spun. He had to get out. He had to get away. 

_ “Shadow monsters!” _

_ “How could we ever love you?” _

_ “Let’s have the monster if we can’t have the man!” _

_ “NO!” _

The dawn flooded his eyes as he flew from the house, the nightmare standing out stark like the imprints of bodies left by an explosion.

The bang of the front door slamming shut pinged up Aphrodite’s spine. She ground her teeth and palmed the potion jar in her pocket. 

“Fine, we’ll wait until dinner.”

*

Ares ran for hours. He lapped the city over and over, trampled every inch of grass in every park, reduced sidewalks to crumbs. The air grazed his face and his heels left sparks as he pushed himself faster than his limit. His legs went numb, his lungs got sore, his stomach grew cavernously empty and his throat barked. He didn’t stop, not to eat or drink or piss. He left his phone at home. He sweat through his hoodie until it changed shade. He didn’t care what this did to his body, as long as it emptied him of the riotous, revolting noise. His entire being had been stinging with noise for days. He felt like he’d been peeled, like every nerve-ending and blood vessel was exposed and raw. A flock of crows and a nest of snakes was under his skin. They shrieked and cawed and gouged at his insides. Every time someone turned to him or touched him, he felt them converge in his mouth and his fingers. Over and over, he grit his teeth, flexed his hands, and forced them back, leaving his organs rattling in his rib cage as they protested, as they tested his strength. When he felt his resolve waver, he plunged himself into heart-rending images of what his temper could do to his family if he gave into the vile urges in his blood. His strength and his loneliness were the only things between them and the rage, the terror, the pain. 

But he was wearing down.

So he ran. If he couldn’t crush these feelings, maybe he could drive them away, expel them like a parasite leaving a body too drained to nourish it.

The sun had arced from East to West and hung level with the building tops, washing them clementine, before Ares accepted it wasn’t going to work. His body was exhausted and it only seemed to give it all freer rein. 

When he couldn’t put off coming home any longer, he stormed into the house without speaking to anyone and plunged himself into an ice cold shower. His muscles frosted, his bones turned to crystal, his scalp seized up around his skull. The noise only rose. He clambered out. He rubbed himself dry so hard that the towel marked him. He changed his clothes three times. Nothing fit. Cotton rubbed and denim pinched. He tried to vomit, but his system had nothing in it. He pounded his fist on the sink. A fine crack appeared by the tap. He awkwardly slid the soap dish over it and rubbed his smarting hand. 

Crows in his cavities and snakes in his blood, all clamouring to get out, to wreak havoc. If he looked at someone too long, touched someone too often, held someone too close, opened his mouth too wide, the creatures might burst out and hurt them. 

_ What if I hurt them? Oh Gods, what if I hurt them? _

He had always been full of boiling water. But this last war - this long, dragging, miserable war - had clumped together all the anger and paranoia and resentment and base, thorned aggression of the troops into a sort of bitter, spicy tea that had been dumped into him and steeped for months, withering inside him, bleeding out into him, polluting him, staining him, changing his flavour so he knew if anyone in this sweet, loving family took a sip, they would choke. They might even be poisoned. He couldn’t spill so much as a drop.

He leaned forward on the bathroom sink and focused on the cool porcelain under his palms.

He could hear the pleasant, homey hum of dinner being served in the kitchen downstairs. The kids shuffling into place, Eros telling Agape to get off her phone, Ludus shouting something and Philautia getting the hiccups. Aphrodite talking. He couldn’t hear what she was saying, just a low, caressing note spreading deliciously through the house. Everything about Aphrodite was so natural. No matter how many people accused her of being fake, he knew better. He felt her like the wind through heather, like water running off the mountains, like roots moving in the earth. Her voice poured over him. He felt a depressing hollowness between his arms and torso.

_ I need to hold you, Soda Pop. I wanna hold you so damn much… No. Too much feeling, too dangerous. Hold it back. Go eat. One step at a time. _

His heart ached.

Actually, it really ached. Ever since the awful moment in his nightmare when Aphrodite had ripped the padlock from his heart, his chest had felt inflamed, torn, ragged. 

He rubbed the pain through his t-shirt and dragged himself to dinner.

It had been months since Ares had heard the sound of metal on porcelain. Meals in the army were eaten off skewers and wooden platters. It was quiet, except for the sound that guy Orion made when he chewed his food. Now ten sets of cutlery were scraping and screeching and clattering on ten china plates, and it felt like a hatching of scorpions in Ares’ ear canal. He could hear it with his whole body, setting every hair on end. He shifted in his seat and flexed his neck, grounding himself in the piquant scent of chilli and the staccato sound of tortilla chips snapping. Grounding was tough, the noise inside him had redoubled at the sight of his kids and how small they all looked in the tall-backed dining chairs.

_ “Soldiers go home from war.”  _ A hiss rose above the racket in his head.  _ “They leave it behind. Home and War can’t exist in the same space. Just like Love and War. War destroys everything it touches.” _

_ Shut up. I’m more than just War. I’m with my family now. _

_ “Are you? Are you really with your family? Can War have a family? Does it deserve one?” _

_ I’m trying to eat. _

_ “Destroy something. You’re so agitated. Why not just get it out of your system? Go on, lose your temper.” _

_ Shut. Up. _

_ “Come oooon, what else are you going to do here? It’s inevitable. Why wait?” _

_ I can hold you back. I will hold you back. _

_ “It’s getting harder, though, isn’t it? The walls are wearing thin.” _

It was true. Today had been maddening. Ares had no idea why, but for some reason control had been ten times the effort it usually was, ever since this morning. Perhaps the nightmare had shaken him, or the exhaustion. It didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was using whatever he had left to keep resisting.

Something knocked on the coaster at his wrist. He jumped and looked up. Aphrodite had placed a tall glass of beer in front of him, her fingers tented over the top. His eyes travelled up the smooth length of her arm and into her smiling face, confident and calm. 

“To help you relax,” she murmured. 

She lifted her hand and squeezed his arm, five cool patches of condensation from the glass printing onto his skin. The beer was an unusual colour, oddly red and with a hint of floral pepper in its scent. He frowned curiously, but nodded. He looked away from her face, looking at her too long opened his heart, with a brutal ache and an answering riot.

Aphrodite returned to the opposite end of the table, as Philia began jabbering in a high squeak about her biology project. Something about keeping something alive, a plant or whatever. Or an egg. No, that’s a different class.

“Isn’t that great, Sunbeam?”

He felt violet headlamps on him. He glanced up. Aphrodite was giving him a look somewhere between encouraging and daggering. Everyone stared at him expectantly, Philia craning her neck around Ludus with her wings fluffed up. Crows pecked the back of his mouth. He coughed. He swallowed hard. He sealed his tongue to the roof of his mouth to dam the flow of beating feathers. He nodded and looked back at his plate. 

_ “Fuck, you’re being such an asshole.”  _

He opened his mouth a sliver to take a bite of chilli. Mania screamed in her high-chair and a spear went through Ares’ brainstem. He bit his tongue. 

_ She’s a baby. Babies scream. It’s nothing bad.  _

Eros tutted and aeroplaned a mouthful of green mush into Mania’s open maw. Mania munched and babbled. 

“Ow! Momma, Pragma pinched me!” Ludus whined.

“Did not!”

“Did too!”

Ares ground his teeth. The sound of squabbling prodded something awake in his memory.

_ “Did you steal my share of the food?” _

_ “What? No, are you mad?” _

_ “There’s barely enough food to go around and you’re sneaking off with second helpings!” _

_ “I am not!” _

_ “Liar!” _

_ The clatter of a ladle hitting a pan. The crash of crates being pushed over. The scuffles and thuds and roars of a brawl. _

“Ares?” 

He looked up again. Aphrodite stared at him down an avenue of chattering children. She glanced at his hand. He glanced too. He’d bent his spoon in his grip. He stood sharply and strode to the cutlery drawer for a spare, the chorus of clinks a hail of arrows hitting the inside of his skull. Behind him the spat was already forgotten. Pragma hooted with laughter at Ludus making walrus teeth out of breadsticks. Ares leaned his palms on the cool marble counter and took a deep breath from the open window. 

_ It isn’t like that here. A fight isn’t going to break out because someone looked sidelong the wrong way. Get it together. _

“Sunbeam?” 

He turned. Aphrodite had spun in her seat to watch him with wide, sympathetic eyes. Her hair was braided over one shoulder and Philia had put a daisy clip behind her ear. 

_ Fates, how are you this perfect all the fucking time?  _

A tiny, discreet crinkle appeared between her fine, arching brows. 

_ Is she upset?  _

She ducked her head a little at him. 

_ Gods, I bet she’s mad.  _

He glanced away and his eyes landed on Eros beside her. He was feeding Mania, pulling silly faces, not looking up at Ares. 

_ He’s mad too. I’ve been such a shitty Dad since I got home. And it was shitty of me to leave. And I don’t write home enough. He should be mad. They’re probably all mad. They’re probably always at least a little background mad at me. What a way to grow up. _

“Ares, Honey?” Aphrodite prompted him again. “Forgotten where the spoons are?”

Ares twitched a quarter of a smile, grabbed a spoon and went back to his seat. His chair scraped harshly on the floor. 

_ Why is everything here so loud?  _

Loud noises broke his concentration. He had to stay focused on containing himself. 

He took a gulp of the beer. He almost choked, the taste was bizarre.  He set the glass down and swallowed and flicked his tongue between his teeth.

_ “Break, _

_ Break, _

_ Spirit, _

_ You are free, _

_ We shatter your cage, _

_ With love, stronger than bronze, than fire, _

_ We tear down the walls, _

_ So you may _

_ Come home, _

_ Break, _

_ Break.” _

_ Huh? What was that? _

And then his insides began to scream. The riot turned into a tornado, it hurled about his mind and body, biting him, splintering him, deluging blows against his staunch resistance. 

_ “What kind of twisted person prays to a God of War?” _

_ “You’re nothing, an irritant as a child and a cancer as a man.” _

_ “Some heart.” _

_ “Some lover.” _

_ “Some father.” _

“Storge, how’s art club?” Eros asked, as he swirled the remains of goop from the baby food jar. 

Storge perked up at his eldest brother’s side. They were both wearing navy blue striped t-shirts, Storge still styling his hair in a copycat curl. 

“Um,” Storge said in a voice like bubblegum popping, “I like it.”

“Yeah?” Eros smiled encouragingly. “What do you like about it?” 

Ares watched the boys over a pile of steaming kidney beans on his new, not-bent spoon. They’d both been such noisy babies, wailing for attention every hour of the day and night. Eros could still holler the house down, but Storge was such a timid thing.

“I… I like when we draw things from the school garden,” Storge muttered.

_ “Come on, sleeping with his ma? He’s too old for monsters under the bed.”  _

“Yeah, Buddy? What did you draw?” Eros smiled kindly.

_ “And now latching onto his brother. Eros is a kid himself. He shouldn’t have to be a role model. He shouldn’t have some little pup tailing him. He should be out. What’s he even doing home on a weekend? Storge shouldn’t be keeping him domesticated like this. Doesn’t it make you angry, War God?” _

“I tried to do a bird, but it flew away, so I did a daisy,” Storge mumbled.

_ “If you’d been there, Storge wouldn’t be like this. He wouldn’t be scared to pick his own clothes or talk about his school clubs or sleep in his own bed. All the other kids at least let you pretend they’re fine. But Storge is the public evidence of your failings as a father.” _

“A daisy like Mommy’s wearing in her hair?” Eros said.

_ “And that was before you came home full of this poison. Now you might as well be radioactive.” _

The hairs on Ares’ arms and the back of his neck stood on end.

_ I’m not listening to you! _

“Mm. Pretty.” Storge looked shyly down at his plate.

_ “Has he ever shown you anything from this club?” _

Fangs scored the insides of Ares’ arteries. 

_ “He’s obviously too nervous to show you anything.” _

Talons up and down his spine. 

_ “He’s not looking at you. Neither of them are. They don’t think it’s safe to let Poppa in on these things. You’d probably ruin it. Look at him looking down. He’s scared in his own house.” _

_ Shut up! _

“Do you ever get to make up stuff to draw?” Eros continued.

_ Just get through dinner. Focus on something else. Don’t listen to the chatter. Keep a lid on.  _

Steam pushed at his tongue. His stomach churned.

“Mmm. Sometimes.” Storge was getting more timid, he could swear it.

_ Chew your food. Swallow.  _

Swallowing was tough. He almost gagged. The food burned up in his gut.

“Yeah?” Eros encouraged.

“Just like… different things.”

Everything burned up in his gut. Everything tasted of that beer, it flooded his mouth and nose. 

“Like what, Big Guy?”

His tongue itched with it. His fingertips throbbed with the brewing in his blood.

“Just… I don’t know.”

“Come on, I want to know what’s in that smarty-pants brain of yours.”

His vision blurred with feathers. He blinked. His head spun. His heart began to beat like a drum, like a war drum, tempesting. Storge’s tiny, reedy voice echoed in his ears, in his skull, always so close to the edge of tears.

“Oh, well, I…”

“Yeah?”

“I… I…”

_ “Gods, don’t you wish he’d just speak up?” _

_ He’s fine. _

_ “Speak up, boy.” _

_ Leave him alone! _

“I… I…”

_ “SPEAK UP!” _

“WHAT?” 

The table quaked as Ares slammed his hand onto it. His spoon went skidding across the floor. His vision clouded red, his blood roared, his heart pummelled his stomach. The flock unleashed. Words began to tumult out of him, unbidden, unrestrained. 

“What, Kid? What? Get your fucking sentence out! What the fuck’s making you so nervous? Just open your damn mouth and SPEAK!”

Everyone blurred in Ares’ vision, except Storge, Storge and his huge violet eyes, his mother’s eyes, his brother’s eyes, widening, rounding, brimming.

_ Don’t say it.  _

“What? Are you gonna cry now? Good! At least it will be something definite!” 

The table banged and rattled again. Eros fizzed into Ares’ vision, magenta through the sheen of red over Ares’ eyes. He stood, craning over Storge like a hawk, his irises scarlet too. “Don’t you dare talk to him like that!”

“Someone has to!” Ares snarled. 

“Why?” Eros barked, incredulous, “I know you’ve been away, but do they not have children in the mortal realm? I knew you’d forgotten how to be a Dad, but I thought you at least still remembered what a child was!”

Ares reeled. The crows caught him and swooped to push him forward. He stood with his fists on the table. Another bang. A small gasp from one of the others. 

_ What are you doing?  _

“I have not forgotten how to be a Dad! You’ve forgotten how to talk to your elders!”

“My elders?” Eros scoffed, “In years maybe, but that doesn’t mean squat on Olympus, and in behaviour you might as well be the youngest one here!”

Storge shrank into Eros’ shadow. 

_ You're frightening him. Sit down. Stop this. Stop it! _

“If we’re talking about age, Storge is too old to be this fucking timid in his own home!”

“You think he’s always like this?” Eros put a hand on Storge’s shoulder and leaned further, shielding him. His wings unfurled, spreading like sunset clouds over the sea, proud and bright and fierce. “You can’t think of anything that’s happened in the past few days that might be getting to him? To all of us?”

_ He’s right. You have to sit down. Please, not here, not with these people, these children, your children.  _

“There’s plenty getting to me too, Kid, but you don’t see me shrivelling up!” 

_ What are you saying? _

“Ha!” Eros snapped, “Don’t we? I don’t think we’ve seen anything but that in a WEEK!”

_ I’m sorry, my darling, please forgive me. I’ve been trying to protect you. From this. Gods, why can’t I stop? Stop!  _

Ares’ fingernails bit his palms. “You have seen a man doing his gods-damn best to stay sane in this fucking zoo of a house!”

“The only animal here is you!”

Storge’s face was wet. He was shaking. He looked like he was going to throw up.

“You will show me some fucking respect, Eros! Or Fates as my witness -”

_ SLAM _ . 

Every face turned sharply to the deafening sound of two palms hitting the table and a chair flying backwards, echoing off the hard floor. Aphrodite mirrored Ares, hunkered over the table as if about to pounce, violet lightning in her eyes and her hair fraying from its braid and writhing. 

They faced each other and the table became a surging sea between them. Her voice resonated across it. “Get. Out.”

Ares glared at Eros and the boy’s proud chin protruding towards him, like the prow of a warship. “You heard your mother.” 

_ Wow, fuck, really? _

“Not him, Ares.” Aphrodite’s voice was lethal, it was quieter than the brush of silk on stone, but it reverberated throughout the house. “You. Leave. Now.”

Cavernous silence.

_ But… This is my everything.  _

“I will not.”

Her eyes flared and her pupils webbed with vibrant, electric fury. “You will. We do not insult and threaten children under this roof. This house is not your encampment. My babies are not your grunts.”

“They’re my babies too.”

_ Please, let me stay, let me fix this.  _

“Not if you speak to them like this.”

_ Please. Don’t make me leave you. _

“Get. Out.”

Ares’ body hushed. 

The red haze dissipated and suddenly he could see them all again. Mania went wide-eyed and clutched her bib. Pragma and Ludus clasped hands and leaned protectively toward each other. Philautia gawped. Philia folded her wings around herself. Agape looked nauseous. Eros stood taller than any god Ares had ever seen, his feathers like a spray of swords. Storge shivered and tears poured from his eyes. 

Aphrodite was surrounded by a pulsing aura, sweeping over her children in a domed shield that stopped before him, cutting him from them, amputating the infected limb from the body. Every pair of eyes was on him, horror and heartache and disappointment.

_ Get out. Get away from them. How could you? Get out. _

He took a step back and his chair fell and banged on the floor. Their sharp intakes of breath stabbed him. 

_ How could you? _

He tore from the table. He could barely see in front of him. He marched, using all his strength not to run. He ripped open the door and threw himself outside, flinging it shut behind him with another quaking bang. 

The evening air stung his skin. He started to tremble. And then to shake. His legs couldn’t hold him. His breath scorched. 

_ Monster. You’re a monster. _

He fled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summary if you skipped: 
> 
> Ares has a nightmare in which he is back on the beach from the war in Chapter One. Aphrodite and Eros appear and tell him that they don't love him and that they believe he never loved them. He tries not to believe them, but feels hurt and afraid. He cups Eros' face and burns Eros' skin. Aphrodite raises Ares' heart in her hand, with a padlock on it. She rips the padlock away and his chest hurts and he falls to his knees. Storge appears and says Ares looks like shadow monsters and runs away. Ares reaches for Storge, but flames shoot from his hand.
> 
> He wakes up alone and has set the bed on fire. He hastily pulls the sheets from the bed and stamps the flames out. Aphrodite comes back to the bedroom, from her spell-casting downstairs, and offers to take care of him. Ares is afraid he will burn her and leaves the house. He spends all day running around Olympus, hoping to expel the intense rage, fear and pain he feels constantly rioting under his skin in the form of shadowy crows and snakes. He reflects on how he has been fighting against it for days, keeping closed to his family to protect them from an explosion of temper.
> 
> At dinner, Ares is feeling exhausted and his control is wearing down. Aphrodite gives him beer spiked with the curse-breaking potion she made last night. Drinking the potion makes the shadow creatures in his mind go wild and he loses his temper with Storge, shouting at him and then arguing fiercely with Eros, as his own inner voice begs him to stop. Aphrodite banishes him from the house for frightening her children, he leaves consumed with shock and self-hate.


	8. Love is a Bitch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Late into the night of the fight with Ares, Aphrodite and Eros process Ares' loss of control. Aphrodite faces fears and regrets, and turns a corner.
> 
> [This chapter contains struggles with self-worth, self-hate, and trust in relationships.]

The house was quieter than the bottom of the sea, as the night drew in. It was the quiet of shipwrecks, of sharks and eels, of the black ravines where you couldn’t even feel the pull of the tide. Aphrodite sat in the dark at the uncleared kitchen table. She had let her hair fall loose, she turned the daisy clip over and over in trembling fingers. A light bulb hummed. Someone rolled over in bed. It was so vilely quiet that she could hear every movement in the house, possibly every movement for miles. Her eyes periodically swam, but she blinked tears resolutely away. She refused to cry in a family space. Someone might see. 

_ “I’m sorry, Momma, I was wrong about Poppa. I should read my monster books again to see what else it could be.” _

Storge’s voice leaked into her mind, tremulous in a strange, soft frenzy, as he tried to figure out why breaking the curse hadn’t worked, while she rocked him against her body and hushed him, her top sodden with his tears. Now, as she heard his voice again, she realised how desperate his theories were, how childish. How he was so horribly afraid that Poppa wasn’t being the man he loved, that he buried himself in monsters and magicians, to make it all safe, to make it all fixable, to make it all go away. 

_ No. That was you. _

Storge was just a baby, understanding the world as best he could, flung between the pure, beautiful faith he had in his family, and the reality of the walls of thorns that sprouted from and around them. He couldn’t be expected to know better.

She could.

_ Of course you couldn’t fix Ares. “Come to bed and do it like this”, “Eat a good dinner”, “Let me patch up that cut”, what a joke. You’re just a silly, little girl playing house. You don’t actually help. You don’t actually mean anything. And then that humiliating attempt at magic. Well done, Aphrodite. Prove them all right. Love is blind. Love is foolish. Love is cruel. Manipulator. Bitch. You knew he was ill, you knew he was hurt, you knew he was struggling. You didn’t want to deal with it, so you called it a curse, latched onto a child’s fantasy, and played witch dress-up instead. It’s how it is, right? You snap your fingers, you play your trick, and the world realigns exactly as you say. Everything just as you want it. Easy as pie. Stupid, spoiled girl. This family is not a bunch of your dolls. You fell in love with Ares because he wasn’t simple. Because if you moved him on the chess board, he somehow still surprised you. He changed the game. And then it wasn’t a game anymore. So why are you still playing? Because it’s what you are. Joke. Manipulator. Bitch. _

“Momma?”

She started and looked up. Eros stood at her side, his wings still out, but softly furled like iris petals. His eyes had dimmed back to lilac and looked at her with darling, chiffon softness.

“Hey, Baby Bear.” She smiled. She didn’t have to force it with him, even now.

Eros gently pulled a chair out and sat. He gazed at her with worry and sweetness. He opened his palm slowly on the table between them.  She clutched it gratefully. As their fingers interlaced, she felt pulled from quicksand. She stroked her thumb over his. 

“How is everybody?” she asked tentatively.

“Fine,” Eros lied. 

He had put everyone to bed as Aphrodite took care of Storge, being the grown-up - strong, dependable, compassionate, so much more than he should have to be at his age.

_ Putting all that on him. You’re such a bad mom. Bitch. _

“How are you?” Eros asked delicately.

Aphrodite had no idea how to answer.

Eros seemed to understand that. He lifted her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss to it. His sweetness filled her with a horrible ache. She turned herself diamond hard to hold back a flow of tears. She didn’t speak until it had subsided. “I should ask how you are.”

Eros looked down at their entwined hands, like a cluster of foxgloves. When he spoke, his voice came fissured and fractured. “You guys always seemed so perfect to me. You just loved each other so much. And then, through that, you loved all of us so much. It didn’t matter how stubborn or grumpy or dumb Dad was, he just loved us so, so much.”

Aphrodite felt vines unfurling in her heart and reaching out for him, wanting to wrap him in a cocoon and hold him forever.

“I mean, you know you’re my favourite.” He glanced up with a weak glimmer of his charm. “I always wanted to be you. I wanted to be glamorous and smart and powerful. But I also wanted to be like you because people like you got loved by people like him. His love was the most special, coveted thing any of us ever knew.” Eros’ huge, hollyhock eyes met hers and they were filled with agony. “And now it’s gone. And we don’t know why.”

The vines in Aphrodite’s heart shot forward desperately. She threw her arms around her son’s neck and crushed kisses into his hair and spoke in a coursing, ardent stream. “Oh, my sweet darling. My perfect, perfect boy. It hasn’t gone. I promise. I swear. He loves you so much. He loves you more than anything in the realms. I really, really promise.”

Eros sniffed loudly and she hung on tighter. 

“I know how awful it’s been, Baby Bear. That’s my fault.”

Eros whipped back, his shining eyes tinged burgundy. “No. Nothing is your fault. You hold this family together while he’s off doing… What? Havoc? Violence? Brutality? No wonder he’s stopped loving us.”

Aphrodite cupped Eros’ face and met his eyes forcefully. She kept her voice soft, but pressed it firm. “He has not stopped loving us.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I have a super power that tells me when someone is in love. And I feel it, Baby, I feel him ablaze with love for us, even as the rest of him might burn away. It’s his core, his life source.” Her heart began to pound, the understanding waking her body. “I don’t know what’s happened to him. But whatever it is, it’s hurting him very badly, and it’s doing that because he still loves us. Because he’s hanging onto how much he loves us with everything he has. Because he’s fighting for us, taking all the pain to keep it from touching us.” 

As she spoke, she became surer and surer of what she was saying. In fearing the idea of Ares changed, she’d concocted the idea of Ares imprisoned against his will. But, no, all this had been about his will. His iron, unyielding will. He had been here and himself and choosing to hide, choosing to hurt, rather than burden his family. She thought of his shell from the Mortal Realm, carrying her in his pocket like a talisman, using the same coping mechanisms as when they were leagues apart. How had she not seen this? He had been keeping a safe distance, staying far away and alone, clinging to a fragment for his only solace, shielding them from whatever had burst out of him tonight. Everything he had done for the whole week had been  _ for  _ them, not against them, not in spite of them. The realisation fortified her, even as it clawed her heart.

Eros didn’t look comforted.

“You don’t believe me?” She asked, stroking her thumb on his cheek.

“I always believe you.” Eros said strictly, his wings stirring and drooping. “But if it’s true, if he still loves us, then I have to ask a question I have never asked, a question I never wanted to ask, ever.”

She stroked her hands down his arms, felt his growing muscles in his fast-maturing form. “What question, Sweetheart?”

He gazed at her with his thick brows scrunched, like his father’s. “Is love enough?”

It was like the toll of a fateful bell. It rang in the air. Aphrodite’s chest tightened. She grasped his arms and looked at him, steadfast and fierce. “Where it is given freely and nurtured consciously, love is always enough.”

Eros’ lips tightened. “There was nothing free or nurturing about tonight.”

“No.” She conceded. 

“So, what?” Eros drew his shoulders up uncertainly. “This curse? Maybe we didn’t break it?”

Aphrodite warmed and looked at him, almost smiling. “Come on. You never thought it was a curse.”

Eros looked away guiltily. “I couldn’t be sure. I don’t want you to think I don’t trust your judgement.”

She rubbed his arms, holding him secure. “I didn’t really believe it was a curse either,” she confessed, cheeks prickling.

_ Silly girl. Reckless bitch. Making your typical mistakes. _

Eros looked at her with a wave of relief. “See, I wondered that!” She felt his shoulders relax a little, as he half-smiled and hesitated. “You weren’t really acting like it was some external force.”

Aphrodite raised her eyebrows questioningly.

“You just went straight into the potion. You didn’t swear revenge.”

His eyes flicked to hers; under all the exhaustion, all the bruising, he was teasing her. Strain blew out of her body in soft laughter. He echoed it, his shoulders bouncing under her hands. She cupped his face again and pulled his head down and kissed his brow, snuffling his quiff. He jerked away from her and batted her hands down playfully. The silence around them eased a little.

“No curse, then.” Eros huffed. “Guess that’s why the breaking charm didn’t work.”

Aphrodite leaned her elbow on the table and rested her cheekbone on long, dexterous fingers. This new, sharp clarity had begun to slot more puzzle pieces into place. Manipulator. Bitch. Maybe so, but that had its uses. People were a puzzle to her, something to break down into pieces and reorder into something that worked, something beautiful, something better, something in its correct place. People were something to solve. And she was single-minded, dogged, in the pursuit of that solution. 

So, it was time to use her real power. What did Ares need? What was happening inside him? Find the answer, find the man.

“It’s not that it didn’t work…” Aphrodite said slowly, her eyes traversing the wood grain on the kitchen table, as her mind started to pick up momentum, “It worked, only I didn’t realise what I was breaking.” She thought of the locked book, of how she’d torn the seal away, of how she’d chanted to Ares’ innermost self  _ Break, Break.  _ “He locked himself down to keep his suffering a secret. When we cast the spell, when I forced his manuscript open, it broke down his own walls.” Her eyes roved back to Eros, leaning forward and hanging on her every word. “What happened tonight was what he locked himself to protect us from. I broke his control and unleashed it.”

Eros held her gaze, it was somehow both sparking alive and stone steady. 

“Unleashed what?” he asked quietly.

Aphrodite thought for a long moment, moving every piece of her understanding around in her head, forming and reforming patterns, throwing them out, starting again, hunting the solution. “I don’t know,” she admitted eventually, a frustrated, bitter edge to her tone, “And I don’t know what he needs.”

Eros watched the fine lines etch and squirm on her brow, watched how her mouth moved, chewing on nothing, watched how she rubbed the pads of her fingers together, plucking and shuffling through possibilities. 

There was something Uncle Hades had said once that had stuck to Eros like tar. At the time, Eros was just a kid, still growing into his shoulders, his wings popping out every time he sneezed, and getting sad all the time, just at random, with no idea why. It had hit him at some royal function or other and he’d tripped over Hades’ pointed shoe, dashing for somewhere to hide. Hades had picked him up, seen his shining eyes, and taken him to a quiet room to sit down.  _ “I don’t understand why I keep feeling like this!” _ Eros had wept. Hades had put his arm around him and said softly,  _ “The love-gods are funny in that way. Insightful about everyone else but themselves. You’ll figure it out. Until then, try and remember that feelings may be your job, but they’re not just a job. You’re allowed them too, and you’re allowed to find them difficult.”  _

Eros reached out and covered Momma’s fingers drumming on her knee. She started and looked at him with deep eyes, lost in their own intelligence.

“Momma,” he said gently, “Feelings may be our job, but they’re not just a job. I’m sure if Dad was just some brute with a heartache, you could find what he needs and solve all his problems lickety-split. But Dad isn’t just some brute, he’s  _ your  _ brute. I think, maybe, in flicking through all the solutions in the book, you’ve forgotten about yourself.”

She cocked her head and frowned.

“Momma,” Eros squeezed her hand, “All Dad needs is you. He doesn’t need you to find an answer. He doesn’t need your spells or your special treatment. He just needs you.”

Aphrodite’s sharp, calculating gaze melted away. Her eyes went round and full. A painful, old darkness seeped into her heart. 

_ Just a silly, little girl playing house. Got to make sure they all play along. Or else... _

She took a shuddering breath. “Eros, I…” She swallowed hard and her fingers trembled under his. “I do things for people.” The words left her before she really knew they were there, and the terrible weight of this week, of a lifetime, ached in her chest and her belly. Her voice was barely above a whisper, but it flowed fast, finally saying the ancient fear she never let herself say out loud. “That’s all I am. That’s how I survive. I do things for people and it works for them, so they keep me. No one wants just me. No one needs just me. If I go to Ares and all I have is myself, no plan, no answer, he won’t…” Her voice cracked. “He won’t want me. He won’t keep me. Just some spoiled girl. Manipulator. Bitch.”

Eros’ eyes flashed red. Not just his eyes, his entire being, his whole self flared furiously. His wings spread. He flung himself forward and clasped Aphrodite in a hug so tight she almost popped apart. 

“Don’t you ever say that!” he commanded, his voice forceful and deep, stronger than the hull of a ship ploughing through a storm. “Don’t you dare! You’re our home, Momma. And it’s not because of anything you do! No one in this family is keeping some damn ledger of all the favours that make you good enough to keep! You’re our centre, our energy, our shell. We love you for everything about you, no matter what! And screw me and my wobble, I know Dad loves you too. Every innate little detail of you makes up the material of his heart. I saw that book, you’re on every page. And it’s not ‘Aphrodite did this for me today’. It’s ‘Aphrodite is more beautiful than the sky’, ‘Aphrodite made me laugh so hard I got a nosebleed’, ‘Aphrodite keeps me warm’, ‘I miss how Aphrodite smells and the shape she leaves in the bed’, ‘Watching Aphrodite be a mom is so sweet it fucking kills me’, ‘I need to be home with Aphrodite’, ‘All I think about is being home with Aphrodite’, ‘I’m counting the days til I’m home with Aphrodite’. It was fucking embarrassing, Momma!”

Aphrodite heaved a sob and it exploded into muffled laughter, squashed against Eros’ collar, breathing his comforting smell of fabric softener and ice cream. He relinquished her and drew back, his hands staying on her forearms. They looked into each other’s tear-stained faces, blotched fuchsia and glistening.

“I hate that you feel that,” Eros said, still flushed with the force of his feelings, “The only kind of bitch you are is a Boss Bitch. Head Bitch. And Dad loves that about you. We all do. No one’s messing with this house, no one’s staying sad or scared under this roof, not with that Bad Bitch Aphrodite guarding us all like an alpha wolf.” 

He gripped her forearms, his sincere, fierce, admiring gaze boring into her and charging at the old demons that had crept out of her shadows. His faith flooded her. That emerging calculating clarity in her mind turned to shining crystal. Her eyes dried. Her breath came steady again. She grasped Eros’ hands and pressed her lips to them, drawing his faith into her body, letting it solidify her, as she teetered on the brink of pouring away into her darkness. How did she keep letting herself make this mistake? Keep letting herself fall back into that tired rhetoric of how little she was worth? 

_ Stop listening to it. It’s just fear. It’s just bad memories. You’re not just what you can give, how you can serve. You don’t have to keep proving yourself worthy over and over, hating yourself every time a solution doesn't work. You are allowed mistakes. You are allowed to not have a plan. You will never be thrown back into the dark, you will never be alone again. You’re not that lost girl wandering through the Titanomachy. You are so much more than the last dregs of Ouranos and the echo of the first slaughter. You are the Lady of Cyprus. You’re Momma. You’re Ma’am and Babe and Soda Pop.  _

She held onto her son’s hands, shielded by his wings, soothed by his spirit. 

_ You are loved. You are respected. You have followers. You have a home. You have a family, the best one in the realms. Eros looks up to you. Ares worships you, wants you, needs you. Just as you are. No conditions. No requirements. No spells. Worthy. Bad Bitch Aphrodite. _

She just had to be brave enough to believe it.

She shot up to stand. She flew to the kitchen closet with everyone’s outdoor gear inside and threw it open.

“What are you doing?” Eros blinked.

Aphrodite snatched up her jacket and whirled it on. Her strength was returning, coursing into her limbs, as if she’d taken a shot of brandy. She answered in a low, determined voice. “I’m going to find him.”

Eros watched his mother the way a cadet watches a veteran. She tossed her hair down her back, she straightened her shoulders, she tugged on a pair of pumps. She might as well have been donning armour. She looked ruthless and courageous and marvellous. General Momma indeed.

Still, concern pricked the back of his neck. “Alone? Will you be OK? Should I come?”

“No,” she said with certainty, “Stay with the little ones.” She flexed her hands, shunning the last of her old, wrong-headed demons. “I’ll be fine. There’s nothing to be afraid of. All he needs is for me to be there." She took a confident breath, anchoring herself in her surging sureness. "That’s all he’s ever needed.”

She swept to Eros and cupped his face again and planted a long, adoring kiss on his forehead. It trickled like golden syrup from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet. His wings folded forward instinctively. She released him and strode to the door and pulled it open. The fresh night air cantered into the kitchen. She turned back and fixed Eros with a look full of flame and purpose. 

“Don’t worry, my wonder.” A fearless smile plumed on her lips. “I’m going to bring him home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The reflection on Ouranos and the Titanomachy is drawn from the most common myth of Aphrodite's birth: she rose, fully formed as an adult, out of the sea foam, after the titan Kronos castrated his father Ouranos and threw his genitals into the ocean. Yeah, Bad Bitch Aphrodite. This makes her older than the six traitors and present in the Mortal Realm at the time of the war, but we don't see her fight. So, my thinking is her association with Kronos' murderous rage made her unwanted, and it wasn't until she proved her powers as a love goddess that she was welcomed among the Olympians.


	9. Ecosystem

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aphrodite follows Ares out into the night. Alone under the stars, the two finally open up.
> 
> We're getting out of the woods now, folks!
> 
> As this fic evolved, so did Aphrodite and Ares' relationship for me. Initially I planned to make this a story about a long-term couple with some bedroom kinks, but it developed into a more all-encompassing Dominant/Submissive dynamic, hence some added tags. This chapter includes some reflections on their BDSM dynamic, and what it means to them, (in conversation, smut's a'comin). It focuses on handling and seeking submission, as this is an Ares-centric story, (it would take a-whole-nother fic for Aphrodite's side!) These reflections are really personal and won't apply to all people knocking about this scene, but I hope they resonate and ring true for these characters.
> 
> [Light reference to abusive parenting. Opening up about anxiety and low self-worth.]
> 
> Thank you to the beautiful Cub for beta-ing!
> 
> Song: [Venus, WESLEE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFiHmP_EwXM) \- Thank you Myth is a Mirror for the rec!

Fresh air. 

Aphrodite let it fill her, let it swoop down on her like a buzzard and carry her, weightless, thoughtless. She gave herself over to instinct. Usually, when she looked for Ares, she did it by logic. She made lists, she visited spots in sequence, she laid out her knowledge of him and made a sensible pathway out of it. Not tonight. Tonight she breathed in the cool breeze, drifted on the scents of leaves about to turn, too-ripe fruit and dust from the earth. She followed her feet and let the rises and imprints of the ground tip and tilt them in the right direction.

She found him in the park.

The deep blue of the night poured into the neat rings of copper-tinting trees and over the clipped, dark grass. Starlight illuminated the sprawling lawn in a cold, crystal, eerie glisten, catching the white of daisies and the waxy gleam of shrubs. But there was one point of warmth. A golden glimmer in the centre of the deserted space drew her eye, like a candle draws a moth. Her body knotted, then stilled and eased.

_ You can do this. We can do this. _

She moved through the grass like an adder, silent and slow and purposeful. As she approached him, lying on his back and staring up at the stars, she saw how his glow crept into the ground around him. He defied the darkness, it couldn’t even get within an inch. It made her ache. 

She reached him and stood looking over him, her shadow falling on his face, turning his cherry blush crimson and masking his eyes. His dull eyes. His expression was listless and stony. She put her hands on her hips.

His eyes rolled to her. He spoke deadpan and gruff. “The first time I ever saw you, you were looking down on me.”

“Love will always look down on war,” she replied steadily.

He held her eye a moment, then dropped his gaze to the grass by his cheek, surly and heavy. His head tilted away from her a little. 

She looked along his body. He looked sagged, disjointed, as if all his harmonious musculature had come undone, and now he was just a dropped sack of odd shapes. He looked exhausted. She lay down beside him, flicking her hair out from under her neck so it trickled out into the grass, like a mountain brook. She wriggled her shoulders and relaxed into the springy give of the earth, exhaled audibly through her nose and folded her hands on her belly in a clear show of settling down for the long haul. They both knew she was more patient than him. She could do this for as long as it took. No use waiting for her to leave.

They were silent for a long while. He didn’t so much as twitch, still half-turned away from her, his eyes concealed. A rat rustled about in a hedge. An owl hooted. Somewhere further off, car wheels skidded and a horn honked. Aphrodite looked steadily up into the stars, let them spin lazily around her; Orion standing stalwart, Ursa Major lumbering across a smear of mist, Cassiopeia lounging in her own beauty. They dripped cobweb threads of light into her pupils and joined the fresh air in sweeping the noise from her mind.

“I didn’t mean to yell at Storge.” Ares’ voice started her back to earth. It came low and monotonous. She had to strain to hear. “I’ll get him a hamster or something. It's hamsters he's into now, right?”

A smile nudged her mouth. “Mice.”

Ares puffed out of his nose and straightened his head to gaze blankly up into the night. “A hamster's just a fat mouse with less diseases. I'll get him a hamster.”

“He’ll love that.” Aphrodite shuffled over and bumped her shoulder playfully on his. “But don’t get the kids a pet every time you lose your temper, we’ll end up running a zoo.”

Ares grunted. He didn’t bump her back. They fell back into silence. Their bodies were less than two inches apart in the grass, but Aphrodite could feel a chasm between them. She rubbed her lips together and curled her fingers, as if pulling a rope across the void. A whisper of a breeze brushed over them. Ares’ fringe flicked under it.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured.

The words lingered between them, like smoke. Aphrodite opened her mouth and let the taste of them rest on her tongue. She rolled onto her side, propped her head on her arm and looked at him squarely. 

“I’m glad you yelled,” she said sincerely.

Ares finally turned his face to her, just a fraction, frowning.

“It’s the most I’ve seen of you in days,” she explained.

He looked away again.

Her voice softened, a whisper coaxing a wounded animal out of a thicket. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” he answered in a boar’s grunt.

“Something did. You're worse than usual.”

He glared at her. His ember eyes flared.

She pressed a little, the way you do to staunch a cut. “Have you hidden an injury from me? Or a loss? Or some thwarted affair?”

“What? No!” He rocked towards her, his mouth and brow tangled and creviced. “You know me, Aph, affairs are distractions, they don't get in my head.”

“So you admit something's in your head.”

He opened his mouth. Then closed it again. He set his teeth. His glare sharpened. He growled and sat abruptly, bringing his knees up and slinging his elbows round them, wringing his hands between his shins. His hair was mussed at the back and littered with grass. His back hulked and his shoulders hunched and she could see how tight and jagged his muscles were, even in the dimness.

She sat up too, tucking her legs under her and combing her hair over one shoulder, so her neck was exposed to him. He glanced sideways. It was only small, but it was important. When cats trust you not to hurt them, they sit with their back to you. Wolves stretch out their paws. Aphrodite showed her neck. 

She followed his gaze out into the tapestry shadows of branches and the slivers of path paling under the crescent moon. When she spoke, she sounded like she was speaking prophecy, solemn and gentle. “You think I don’t understand what it's like for you when you go down there.” She took a cooling breath. “Ares, you're with them as they fight. Who do you think they pray to as they die? ‘Let me look at her one last time’, ‘Let him not be disappointed in me’, ‘Let us swim in the Styx together, at least’. I have heard every last thought, every final wish, every snip of thread being cut.”

“Then you have their relief.” 

He dropped his head and looked down at his twisting hands. The shadows moved on his jaw where he was grinding his teeth. She watched his face carefully. 

“Does it hurt you?” He asked meekly, after another dragging pause.

“Yes.” It was honest.

His head bowed towards her. He looked at her legs, rather than her face, his voice hoarse and hushed. “How do you cope?”

She shrugged. “I think about you.”

His gaze snapped up and she almost shrank from the fresh-blood brightness, urgent and bewildered. “But I'm causing it!”

The pain in his voice skewered her, her heart clenched. She put a firm hand on his forearm and looked sincerely into his eyes. “You’re not. You’re just there for them, as they call on you. Like I am.” She squeezed his arm. “There’d be love and war without us. But there’d be no glory in it, no energy or ardour. Just animals fucking and fighting.”

He dropped his gaze again. He rolled his shoulders. She kept her hand on him. Whenever he moved even a little she felt it travel around his whole body. She needed to keep him pinned, linked to her.

_ He just needs me to be there. _

“Tell me how you're feeling,” she ventured.

“Like shit,” he grumbled to the floor.

“OK. More.”

“There isn't more.”

His forearm tensed. She stroked up it to his bicep and rubbed around the mound in soft circles, drawing his focus to her touch. “There’s always more with you, Ares. No matter how often you try to persuade me otherwise.”

She kept up her circling, deepening it. He breathed out, quiet and slow. His eyelids fluttered. His hunkered shoulders lowered a fraction. She felt his warmth fill her hand, as he eased his weight a little towards her. 

_ You can do it, Honey. _

His lips parted. No sound came out. He cleared his throat. A rasp snagged the beginning of his speech, like he was hauling it up his throat out of his gut. “I feel like there's a screaming under my skin. I feel…” He scrabbled for the word. “Itchy. I feel like someone rubbed poison ivy directly onto my nerves. I feel like acid.”

She nodded. “You’re angry.”

“Yes, I’m fucking angry!”

She didn’t flinch. His snarl sent a tremor through the ground and his joints jarred in his shoulder, buzzing on her fingertips. She absorbed it. “Keep going.”

Ares blew loudly out through his teeth. He swept his hand over his face and back over his hair, leaving it sticking out at odd angles. His face warped through a shuffling card deck of expressions; pain, frustration, sulk, fear, pain again. Each one pressed a fresh ache into Aphrodite. She watched his eyes vigilantly for anything that might let her in. 

“Nothing happened,” he said eventually, the words rumbling out of him like an overloaded wagon. “It was bloody. It was long and drawn out and it came to an uneasy truce. No borders changed. No poems were written. The same old guys ended up on the same old thrones. And it was fucking bloody. Fucking brutal. And fucking pointless.”

Aphrodite felt a glimmer of understanding coming to her through the darkness of the night, creeping from Ares’ burnished glow. 

“Don't tell me you’re getting a soft spot for the mortals, like little old me,” she joked, bumping his shoulder again.

He didn’t react. He looked at his knee, then glowered straight ahead. “It’s not that.” 

He rubbed the back of his neck, thinking. She could see him formulating his words. She waited. 

“They were so... sad. Like, aggressively miserable,” he said slowly, “And furious. And resentful. And cold. I feel…” He rummaged for the next word. “Infected with it.” He began to speed up, until the words were tumbling and his voice was rising higher and his breath coming shorter. “Every death was like a boil bursting. It didn't feel like being on a battlefield, it felt like being in a plague house. And it got inside me, polluted my whole system, all those feelings raging in my body every second of the day and night. It always kinda happens, but then there’s a victory or a mourning and they can purge, and so do I. But there wasn’t that this time. They went home angry, sick with it. And so did I. Every time I touch you, or look at you, or speak to you, or the kids, I risk passing the contagion, lashing out. I thought if I could just keep it inside myself, then you’d all be safe. But as fucking always, I lost fucking control.” He balled his fists.

The mortal ink in his heart book. It all finally slotted into place in Aphrodite’s mind. It wasn’t a curse, it wasn’t even malicious, it was just an accident, a horrible accident. He’d suffered everything his people suffered, and it had rooted too deep and grown too thorned. Her dear Ares, the only other one in all the realms who knew how it felt to be haunted by everyone else’s demons.

She kept her hand on his arm, still rubbing in a soothing rhythm, and raised the other to his back. She massaged in another circle. He didn’t lean into her, but at least he didn’t tense against it.

She tentatively kissed his shoulder and murmured softly to him. “I think of you as contagious too, but in a good way. Your smile, your spirit, your daring, your lust. I could catch those diseases all day, I hope I never find the cure.”

Ares shook his head. His brow buckled. “I’m carbon monoxide. I can feel myself seeping into our relationship and throttling it.”

“I presume you’re feeling too serious for me to make a joke about erotic asphyxiation.”

He put his face in his hands and let out a quiet, exhausted groan. His back billowed out into her hand and shrank, as he heaved in a steadying breath. There was a tremor under her fingertips. She pressed firmer into him. Headlights swung around the nearest copse of trees and cast a stark glare over his jutting cheekbones. A cat hissed and a nightingale went wheeling across a low icing of stars.

Ares mumbled through his hands. “Does Storge hate me?”

Aphrodite’s heart clenched again. “Storge thinks you are the pinnacle of greatness. Last week he told all the other kids at school that the way Nana and Gramps made you was by pulling a lump out of the sun and moulding it into a man.”

His fingers parted and one red agate eye peeked through. “Did you tell him that? Did he ask where babies come from?”

Aphrodite snorted. “Ares, if our kids ask me where babies come from, there’s a damn diagram. He remembered me calling you Sunbeam and drew conclusions.”

“Dumbass kid.”

“Creative and intelligent kid, who loves you so much he could burst. We all love you, Sunbeam, more than anything, more than life, eternal life. You could have come home as nothing but a sack of angry bees, we’d just be happy to make honey.” She squeezed him between her hands. “You’re holding a venom under your skin, because you think if you keep it in your body it can’t harm us. But there’s only one thing to do with venom, and that’s to draw it out. And that always takes some help.” She stroked his hair, tenderly tucking it off his temple and sneaking her fingers to the roots in the touch that always loosened his spine. “Let us help you, my beautiful Ares. Let me help you.”

Her fingers travelled through his hair again, then down his back, carrying the trickling sensation from his scalp to his tailbone. His breathing slowed. She felt him hesitate, then finally lean into her touch. His head dropped back and lolled slightly and his eyes fell closed, as he let her weave a cradle for him out of her fluid, lulling motion. A breeze whisked over them again and cooled their faces.

“I hate it when you talk like this,” he said in a faraway husk.

“Like what?”

“Sweet.”

She pursed her lips. “Why?”

His shoulder blades flexed, summoning her touch to a knot between them. He moaned in his throat, as she found it and worked it supple. His moan slithered into muffled words through closed teeth. “Because you make everything easy. You're supposed to be the one that challenges me. That fights me. That defeats me.”

“I thought that was Eros' job.”

“Eros is a mouthy little scamp.”

“Who adores you too.”

He made a dismissive, snuffling noise and flexed his thick neck. She trailed her fingers up to it and worked it at the base, pine hard. His solid, crooked shoulders sank and smoothed.

“I thought you’d be pleased not to have me jabbing you or nagging you,” she said.

Ares’ eyes blinked open. He turned to her with his whole body, one knee falling into the grass and brushing hers. He looked at her, no, into her, with a severity that made her prickle behind her ears. “Is that what you think it is when you face me? When you rise up tall and drown me in your shadow and the heat of your eyes? Aphrodite, you are not a sparring partner, you are not a nag. You…” His hot eyes roved around her. “You are Wrath.”

Even after all these centuries, when he burned close to her like this, impassioned and zealous, it set her body whirring. Her breath snatched. She forced it back into its rhythm.

He broke her gaze, leaving her cheeks tingling, and propped himself up on one straight, tensed arm. His sunset stare wandered over her shoulder. “I think there was a part of me all this week that wanted to make you mad, that wanted to make you fight me, just so I could feel you. I couldn’t reach out to you, but, fuck, I wanted to feel you inside of me again.” He glanced at her, his face soft and strained. “But you stayed so sweet. You put on that fixed face I see you wear in front of my family and the rest of Olympus. The face you never showed me.” He looked down like a penitent. “The face I was supposed to be strong enough not to need. You saw I wasn’t anymore, and you put it up between us. I made it so you had to. You’d already left me before you threw me out, and I deserved it.”

Aphrodite’s insides lurched. “No…”

“Bullshit, Aph. I made one promise to myself when we got together. One. I knew I would never be handsome or smart or charming or soft enough, fucking anything enough, to be worthy of you. But I had one thing I knew you wanted, I didn’t ask for your mask. I promised myself I would never make you feel like you had to wear it. I broke my promise. I failed you. All of you, the kids…” He trailed off as his voice cracked. He shook his head and clenched his teeth. His nostrils flared. His temple ticked. He quickly craned his neck down to hide his face and dug the pads of his thumb and forefinger into his eyes. He stayed stock still, like a man seeing a bear through the trees. 

His wave of sorrow pelted Aphrodite. She steeled against her answering wave of nausea. She swallowed hard. The confession came from her in a whisper thinner than tissue paper. “I failed you.”

Ares frowned at her, his fingers drifting from shining eyes.

“You didn’t lose control, Ares. I broke your will. I cast a spell on you.”

Ares sniffed and cleared his throat. “What? What kind of spell?”

Aphrodite’s voice vanished. She took a shaking breath and shoved it over her trembling tongue. “I convinced myself that you were pulling back from us because a curse had locked your heart. I tried to break the curse, and broke you instead.”

Ares stared at her, brow furrowed. He blinked rapidly. “You used magic on me? Without asking? Without even knowing what it was you were doing?”

Aphrodite felt something wither in her belly. She nodded. 

A fox wailed and it lanced Ares’ harshening tone.  “What did this fucking thing involve?”

Aphrodite made herself meet his glare, but she did it sideways, drawing her shoulder up and wincing. “I… I infused a potion with the emotions of myself, Eros and Storge…”

“The kids!”

She gave a very small nod.

Ares’ eyes went wide and fiery. “Storge! You let Storge do love magic at his age? And Eros with all that trouble he’s been having with his new powers? You can’t be fucking serious!”

“I know!” Aphrodite gabbled, “I was in my head, I…”

“And what did you do with this potion?” He loomed over her.

She replied through tight, guilty lips. “It was in your beer at dinner.”

Ares’ glare fizzed, then hazed, then scraped from his face leaving painful claw marks, as the realisation dawned on him. Aphrodite watched him with her heart pounding and her throat clogging. The enormity of what she’d done hadn’t hit her yet. Now it barrelled into her and winded her, leaving her cold and stinging with horror. His body had been entrusted to her, placed devotedly in her care, given over to conjuring and chemistry. Because he knew he was safe. Because she would never exploit it, never go against his wishes, never do anything without consent. She’d desecrated the temple. 

_ Oh Gods… No… _

“Fuck. Fuck. Fates. Fuck!” Ares hissed through his teeth and punched the ground on the other side of his body to her. His chest started pumping in harried breaths. He drove his fingers into his hair and gripped his skull and huffed heavily, jabbering in a rough panic. “I’m not safe! You just tampered with fucking dynamite! We’re fucking lucky all I did was shout! Fuck, what I could have done…”

She hadn’t expected this, she’d been waiting for anger at her violation. She raised a wary eyebrow. “You wouldn’t have hurt anyone.”

Ares rounded on her, his eyes flashing and wild. Another set of headlights blazed, marring his face, furious and ghastly. “There was a fucking time when Ma said that to Dad! And when Rhea said it to Kronos! The men in this family turn, Aph, I’ve been monitoring that my whole fucking life! Do you have any idea how fucking terrified I am, every single time I come home, that this is the time it comes for me? For you?”

She squared her shoulders and faced him. “Ares, Kronos was insane, and Zeus is just cruel.”

“No! They’re angry! Just like me!” There was terror behind his fury, he thumped his chest too hard on the final word, trying to hammer the understanding into her, to make her as afraid of him as he was.

She hardened against it, feeling the sparks in her skin when violet electricity shot into her irises. “You are nothing like them.”

“I could be!”

“Ares! Stop!” She raised her voice above his, drawing herself tall in her seat. She spoke in a deep, unyielding, coursing voice. “They are angry because they think they’re entitled to every fucking thing in every realm and it hurts their precious eggshell egos when that’s challenged!” She softened a touch, but kept her tone commanding. She pressed her hand over his, on his heart. “You are angry because people you care for live under threat and degradation, because rage and hurt are everywhere and you feel it - you feel for others! I know you make a joke out of it, you play with it for fun, but don’t think anyone close to you is fooled for a second. You don’t delight in anger because you’re shitty and abusive, you do it because it’s the only way you can stomach knowing all the time how much people are feeling.” His heartbeat banged through his hand into hers, she clutched it. “Have you noticed you never draw anger out of your father? Or any kings, or other powerful idiots? Only good, little maidens and shy school teachers and tired labourers, the poor and obscure and afraid. You lure their anger from them and make it the fire they use to forge their new world. You are not Kronos, Ares. And you sure as shit are not Zeus. You don’t want power and admiration and wealth. You want to meet people at their most passionate, their most raw, and make them mighty. You want reality and change and strength and bravery and resistance, and that will never be a danger in my house!”

His galloping pulse stilled. He stared at her, the ferocity extinguished. 

She leaned on his hand, his heart. “Tell me how you felt when Eros stood up to you tonight. Truly.”

He stammered a little.

“Did you want to hurt him?”

“No!” He looked horrified. His hand moved agitatedly under hers. He caught his breath and dropped his eyes, tired again. “Proud,” he said quietly, “I felt proud. Under all the crap of fighting with my baby, that is.”

She scooped his hand from his chest and crushed a kiss to it. She looked with large, stern eyes into his face, pulling his gaze back to her. “See? Zeus isn’t proud of you, not because you’re undeserving, but because he can never be proud of a person who shows their anger to him. His throne is on a dais made of lies and feeble acquiescence. He is terrified of resistance and it makes him malicious.” She clasped his hand in both of hers, stroking her fingers around the callouses and knots. “You are raised up by challenge. You want to be faced. You want to see others stand tall, as you lend them your strength. You want to learn from them, to be made better through fight. What did you say to me just now? You need me to challenge you, to defeat you. When has Zeus ever said that to your mom?”

Ares had no reply.

“Exactly. Zeus’ anger is a lightning storm. It strikes at random, in the extremes, destroying everything that stands tall enough to draw its eye. Your anger is a bonfire, it burns constantly and it calls people to it. Even when they feel it too hot or too bright, it energises, it protects, it signals.” She kissed his hand again, searing her lips. “It brings hope.”

Silence yawned around them, as Ares let her words seep in. Slowly, subtly, he turned his hand in hers and interlaced their fingers.

“I’m sorry I caused you pain,” Aphrodite said to their conjoined hands, “But I will not apologise for putting the family in danger. That didn’t happen.” 

An anvil-weight pause. He nodded. He eased his hand out of hers and sighed heavily. The momentum of it rocked him backwards to rest on his elbows, head knocking back to stare at the sky. His expression went listless again.

Aphrodite’s hand retreated into her lap. She bunched her skirt in her hands to dry them as her palms broke out in a thin sweat. “I'm sorry I played with you without your OK.”

Ares gruffed and shrugged, his voice turned dull and sullen. “No, that’s fine. I get it, no one wants a broken toy.”

Aphrodite looked up sharply. “What?”

Ares droned at the cream vein of crescent moon. “My father gave me a purpose because he feared me without one. Now all he has to do is hate me. I found my own purpose with you.” He nodded his head to her with a slight sardonic smile. “Slaughter your enemies and fill the world with your children. Now all you have to do is enjoy me.” He puffed and shrugged again. “But, OK, you’re not afraid of me. So, if I break, what is there for you? Nothing. That’s how this works, right? Ma’am plays with her boy-toy.”

Aphrodite rushed with anger. She threw herself forward, landing with a hard thud astride his lap, her hands clasping either side of his neck and curling to snare him with her long fingernails. Ares looked shocked, flushing as her anger lunged into his senses. His torso went concave and his elbows scuffed in the dirt, as he leaned back, almost fearfully.

“That is not what we are!” Aphrodite snapped, “I wasn't trying to fix you because you were my broken toy.” She sank her fingernails deeper, possessive. “I was trying to fix you because I couldn't face the horrible alternative. That I'm not good enough. That I'm not your everything. That my perfect, darling, favourite, adored Ares needs something other than me, better than me. Because the day you realise that is the day I die.” Her voice wisped, she gulped back tears.

Shock still sparked on Ares’ face, his eyes round and sputtering with flame. He threw his hands forward, rocking up to her, and bunched the fabric of her dress in his fists at her waist. His knuckles dug under her ribs. “You're not good enough for me?” He was incredulous. “I'm the dirt under your feet!”

Her heart banged. She clamped his face between her hands, grinding her knees in the soil. holding his gaze fiercely, desperately, all her aloof, soothing veneer banished. “You are the ground I stand on. Without you, I fall into darkness.” She fought to keep her voice steady. The stars were falling in his eyes. “I didn’t take you as mine because you were young and shiny and I wanted some fun. Ares, I took you because I am fascinated by you. I remember when I first saw you, the sun on your face, staring up to the sky, lost and happy to be. And then I saw all your power and your passion and your huge, unstoppable heart, and the way it was being crushed and starved in that fucking house by that fucking man and I just thought,  _ Gods, I want to see that flame eat up the world _ . I craved the idea of you submitting to me, because it put something primal and incredible at my fingertips. Then, privilege on privilege, you let me nurture it and hold it and spoil it rotten, like it fucking deserves.” She sobbed out a joyful laugh at the barrage of exquisite memories washing over her. She ploughed on. “As you got to trust me, as you showed me more of yourself, you became more breath-taking every day. No one trusts me, Ares, no one but you. When you take that from me, I bleed. You came home hurting and you weren't talking to me, and that meant you didn't trust me and I was losing all that wonder and beauty and passion, the person more precious to me than anything.” Bitter regret leaked into her tone. “So, I panicked. I couldn’t bear it. I did something stupid, because at least it was doing something, and not just letting my world fall away. I wasn't changing the batteries in a fucking vibrator. I have real vibrators. I can’t believe I made this dynamic mean that to you. I…”

Her throat clogged. She choked on rising bile. How could she have done this? Centuries of care, of honesty, of negotiation. Everything between them - other partners, parenting, power, play - it had all been worked out so attentively. Trust and transparency, the two gifts they gave to each other and to no one else in the realms. It hadn’t just been good practice, it had been her way of showing him how important he was. He’d been tossed about by Olympus all his life, the debris of his parents’ miserable marriage, moved where it was convenient, kept in the dark about all the politics and schemes he fought for. She wanted him to have full knowledge of everything that she ever asked of him, to choose and want every aspect of his time with her, to have complete freedom to refuse and escape and grow and ask for more. She wanted him to know he deserved that, that he was worth her patience and her care and her indulgence. It let her help him wield his power, proved to him just how brilliant he was. In the shelter of her adoration, she’d seen him evolve from Zeus’ volatile brat to this… God. A real God. Strong, adventurous, steadfast, and bewilderingly, thoughtlessly kind. She called him Toy because it gave them room to play. It let him relinquish all the pressures of princedom, and fall into beautiful, ridiculous fictions with her, where they could find themselves and find each other, become more, become better, at least for themselves. But in casting her spell, tampering with his body without consent, she’d broken the shell of trust that imaginary world existed in. Now the game had leaked out into his reality. Now Toy meant something shallow, worthless, disposable, all the things he always feared he was. She felt sick. She felt bruised all over. She had to stop this, even if it meant sacrificing that special space.

“We’ll throw it away,” she said firmly, “If that’s what you think you are to me when you submit, then you never will again.”

“No!” Ares grabbed her waist so hard it sent a bolt up her spine. He looked anxiously into her eyes, trembling, all his sullenness gone and replaced with the raw fear and need that wound round his core. “No, I…” His eyes shone, his fingers curled even tighter. “I need it,” he rasped. 

Aphrodite softened. Her eyes were wet too. A breeze stroked her shoulders and a nightjar whistled low.

Ares groaned weakly and, with the true, intense release he'd withheld from her all this time, he sank into her arms. He coiled his embrace around her like a boa and burrowed his face into the gentle curve where her neck met her shoulder. He let his muscles thaw and mould to her shape, drawing her close. Her legs wrapped his middle and her flesh pressed to his and flushed. She sighed in agonised relief. Her body sang in a strange harmony of the rapture of him finally holding her like this again, and the terrible knowledge of how badly he was hurting. She kissed his hair and wrapped him tight, secure, unwavering. 

_ I’ve got you, my love. Let me hold you together. You don’t have to do anything anymore. I’ve got you. _

A shudder passed through Ares, thrumming on her skin, as he finally let himself go. Words spilled from him in shaking breaths that heated her shoulder like bellows. “ I need your dominance. I need you to own me. I need to be yours. You reforge me. I come back to you this warped lump of ore and you heat me and beat me and mould me, and the slag all pours off me, and I'm your weapon to wield again. It's perfect. But this time, it's so much worse. I’m so lost in it. I can't find where the job ends and I begin, I don't know if it's my anger I'm feeling or someone else's, I don't know how my body works without armour on, I feel crowded out of my own head. All I’ve wanted, from the second I set off from that fucking beach, is for you to make me yours again. But, fuck, I couldn't let you touch whatever I am right now. I’ve been so terrified of hurting you. Or that if I don't understand the material I'm asking you to smith, we'll burn away the wrong parts and I'll never be that weapon again. Then what? We're supposed to be a team, we work together. If I'm not the right stuff anymore…” He gulped and shook. “I can't be cast away from you, you're my life, I…” A huge, sore, suffering sob cascaded out of his chest. Scalding tears gushed onto her shoulder, soaking her jacket. He held her so tight it hurt. “It doesn’t matter if you think I’m just a toy, I’m not upset by that, Aphrodite. I didn’t say that to accuse you of thinking it, just to say that you can. As long as you keep me.”

He trembled so violently, she felt it like Charybdis in her organs. She squeezed with her legs and rubbed his shoulders, raked her hand into his hair and bent her face into the soft tousle. She hushed him gently, stroking and caressing and cradling, keeping her body relaxed so he could grip her as hard as he needed. She felt her heart aching and soothing in turns, taking his anguish into it, mining it out of his system. 

“Ares,” she said, “I don't want you like warriors want weapons. We aren't two separate, compatible things that make each other work. I don't shape you for use. That is not your submission. That is not what you are to me.”

“Then what am I?” He coughed thickly, hands pawing at her back. “Please don’t take that purpose from me, it’s all I have. I’m not wanted on Olympus. I’m not wanted by mortals. If I’m not your sword, I’m nothing.”

“That’s not true.”

He sobbed again, shuddered again. “It doesn’t matter. I need to act like it is, or I’ll lose myself. It’s my anchor.”

Aphrodite took this in. She wanted to scream to him about how beautiful and powerful and glorious he was, scream that he was everything. She wanted to scream it until he couldn’t hear anything except it, until the stars were rattled out of the heavens. But those ugly voices inside him were weeds, cankers, ulcers. They had hold. They couldn’t just be screamed away.

She kissed his hair again, savouring the scent of his shampoo and the cut grass. “OK.” She measured her words carefully. She needed to make him understand. “Anchor yourself to this. You are the oxygen in my blood, you are the pigment in my skin. I need you as much as you need me. I couldn’t cast you away if I tried. I don’t just mess with you for heartless fun and stay unaffected, why would I? That’s just a lot of work for no real reward.” Another gentle kiss to the vanilla cotton. “We act on each other. Together, we make up nature. Hot air rises and cold air falls, and where it meets, the wind blows. Maybe I’m generally the controlling gust, but I ghost away without you. Wolves trample deer into the dirt and tear their bodies, but they starve without deer to hunt, and deer get out of control and strip their food down and starve without wolves. The forest needs them both to survive.” She hugged his shoulders tighter. “We are an ecosystem. And if you aren't well, we grow and adapt and heal together.”

She finished and let Ares linger in her words, let them take their positions in the battlefield inside him, new defenders, new guardians. At least, she hoped. She leaned back an inch, wanting to see his face. He mirrored her, peeling from her neck with a little reluctance. When he raised his eyes to her, they were smudged but dry, his cheeks inflamed red and glistening. He looked deeply, crushingly tired, but calmed, glimmering warmer. 

He sniffed and peeked at her under the mess of his fringe. “Ecosystem, huh?” He seemed to be tasting the word, rolling it on his tongue.

Aphrodite smiled and stroked her thumb over his cheek, smearing the damp patch. “Ecosystem. Does that work?”

His jealous, frightened grip on her eased. He held her close, but with tenderness, growing certainty. He ran his hands slowly up and down her back. Her spine tingled and she let go of a tension she didn’t even know she was holding. His eyes roved over her, as her body rolled, dispersing the sensation across her muscles. She looked a little nervously into his smoothed, pensive face. 

He nodded. “That works.”

She smiled. He smiled too. It was shy and burdened, but it was an unmistakable smile. Her heart pooled in her chest. She exhaled heavily and kissed his forehead, then his temple, his cheek, his jaw. He moaned quietly. His head tilted back, opening his throat for her, his hands traversing with a little more speed and confidence around her back and waist and ass. She padded kisses down his neck. He moaned again and it carried his head forward. He curled into her arms and nuzzled to her neck too, lapping it like a kitten. She hummed. There was something painfully, beautifully caring in his tentative, exploratory touch. It teased out the threads of their beings and wove them together. The wounds between them began to knit. She stopped supporting herself, gave herself entirely to his body, trusting him as she always could to take her weight and hold her safe. His lips traced her shoulder. Hers sneaked down his nose. She kissed the tip of it. 

This wasn’t it, though, this wasn’t an easy end.

“The thing about ecosystems,” she said carefully, “Is sometimes they need a biologist.” She cupped his face and kissed his nose again. “I think you should consider therapy. And I probably should too.”

Ares’ eyes flickered. He swallowed and gave a weak chuckle. “I don't know if I'm brave enough for that.”

She cocked an eyebrow in mock challenge and stroked her hands from his face down the broad plain of his chest. “Yes, you are.”

He drummed his fingers on the small of her back and kissed her chin. “You sound so sure.”

“I am.” She plucked at his t-shirt. “Want to know why?”

He sighed and clucked his tongue, but brushed his lips over her cheek. “Tell me.”

She slid in his lap, scooping her hips so her seat settled over his crotch and her thighs clasped his hips, her skirt pushed up so the shadows slid over her bare skin. She ran her hands around his chest and shoulders and down his strong arms, stroking every fibre of muscle back to life. She spoke in a low, seductive lilt that symphonised with the rustle and calls of the night. “Because you are a big, buff soldier boy, with all this reputation to uphold, and yet, you let me put a bridle on you and ride you around and feed you sugar lumps.” She began to rock ever so slightly in her seat. She saw his eyes flick to the moonbeams slipping on her river-current hair and over the rise of her breasts. She circled her fingertip on the nape of his neck. “You let me collar you and pull you on a lead and call you names.” She traced her thumb over his lips. “You let me blind you and gag you and burn you and mark you, bind your balls and bring you lower than the beasts.” She kissed his brow, then met his eyes seriously. “You surrender to me. And that, Ares,  _ that  _ is unmatched bravery.” 

His gaze turned warm, moved, going from hard carnelian to honey. She could feel him swelling beneath her, waking to her, needing her. She closed her thighs tighter. She wet her lip and let it jut, gleaming in the starlight.

She deepened her voice, a hint of the desire flowing into it from her core. “You think, when you get home, I make you feel better by stripping the stress out of your body, taking you apart and putting you back together. Machine maintenance. If only I had that power over you. I'd never do housework or have an argument or have to co-pick a vacation spot ever again.” She trailed her fingertip from the nape of his neck along his jaw and hooked his chin. This time, the tremor through him was pleasing. “You feel better about yourself with me because I am the fucking biggest bad in the realms, and your true courage lies in the space between us.”

She pressed her hand to his heart, then her own. Ares gazed at her with enveloping warmth. His face crumpled. He collapsed to her mouth. 

Their kiss unmade the last awful hours, the last awful week, the last awful months. The distance, the lies, the tricks, the doubt, the fear, the fight, the guilt, the anger. It all turned paler than the moon, thinner than the breeze, it rotted like the late raspberries and crumbled into the earth. They sank into each other, no more holding back or taloned possessiveness. They suspended in the moment, their lips and tongues responding softly and generously to each other, reopening the lifelong communication their relationship was built on. They kissed for a long, heady moment. When they broke, they stayed huddled close in each other’s arms, lips less than an inch apart. 

Aphrodite caught her breath. “You have no idea how much I’ve missed kissing you like that.”

“Believe me,” Ares sighed, “I really fucking do.”

They kissed again. It gushed through their bodies. The blood rushed to Aphrodite’s cheeks and lips and the painful aching in her heart trickled into a pleasant, humming ache between her legs. 

_ I’m going to bring him home. _

Ares’ mouth pulled from hers and sent ripples across her flesh, as he ran it over her cheek and hairline, massaging her lower back with his strong hands. “Help me find that courage again.” His murmur tickled her ear. “I want to be courageous for you, Ma'am.” His voice husked on that final word and a sultry, wicked tease stole into his tone. He ran his tongue slowly up the length of her neck, hitting every sensitive spot. “I want to be your brave boy.”

It was his play voice, the irresistible signal that he was about to tempt her to their enchanted isle. The call of his boyish spirit, asking for something silly and sexy and secret, something to carry them away. Just the two of them. 

_ Manipulator? World-maker. _

His teeth emerged from his lips. He drew them down her jugular, as he cupped her ass and tucked her onto the mound of his cock, pressing through his jeans. A pulse went up her body, he chuckled at her gasp. She bunched his hair in her hand and pulled and twisted. He hissed and moaned and caught her mouth fervently. This was the precious moment when consent turned to pleading and gifting; when their old, sacred treaty grew into the co-construction of language and law and territory that made up the wild country of their partnership.

_ Silly little girl playing house? Mmm. Perfect. _

Ares’ coaxing voice vibrated against her throat. “So, you think you’re the biggest bad in the realms, huh? Big talk, Beautiful. You gonna prove it?” 

Her vertebrae spun. “Oh Gods, Honey, I want to scare the life out of you and watch you face it, like the hero I know you are.”

“Yeah?” Ares circled his tongue just beneath her ear. “Tell me how you wanna scare me.” His voice was dirty and mocking, but underneath it was thick with yearning and hope. His touch pressed deep in her muscle.

“I want to whip you,” Aphrodite breathed, “I want you red.”

“Fuck…” he groaned.

“I want to be on you like a fucking lioness. I want to bite you and claw you and eat you alive.”

He shivered. “Keep talking.”

“I want to shackle you and make you desperate.”

He moaned and delved into her neck and sucked and bit. “Uhuh…”

It stung deliciously. She slinked her body against his and another delightful shudder poured from him into her. She hissed into his ear. “You said you wanted to feel me inside of you? I want to drive deep, I want to pierce you and feel you come apart in my hands.”

His voice fractured. “Fuck, yeah…”

_ Bitch? You bet your ass. _

She clamped his earlobe between her teeth. His whimper thrilled her. “I want to make you mine all over again.”

“Shit, do it.” His teasing fled, now he was breathless. He cupped her cheek with one hand and kissed her face feverishly over and over. “Conquer me, bring me to my fucking knees.”

His kisses fluttered through her skin. Her smile spread over her lips, as she clawed down his chest. “You don’t know what’s in your head? You don’t know who you are? I’m going to make it so there’s nothing left inside you except pain and pleasure and worship.”

Ares moaned, still cradling her cheek. He kissed the corner of her mouth, then his lips crept to her ear. His final, low, pulse-plucking whisper washed her with relief and joy, filled her up and drowned every last scrap of doubt. 

“Aphrodite, I love you.”

She melted into those words. She cast her head back and let her vision overflow with sparkling, dancing stars. 

She dropped her face back down, pulled back from him, and plucked his lower lip between foreknuckle and thumb. She glared into his burning eyes. “Don’t try to sweet talk your way out of this one, Soldier.”

She tugged him by his lip into a fierce kiss.

Purple mist swirled around them.

They clutched each other. A sleek fox stared. An owl soared white overhead. A cat’s eyes lit up green in another swathe of headlights that flared across the park and dazzled the space around them.

The car sputtered in the distance and spun round a corner.

When the lights swept away, the Gods of Love and War were gone. A trace of violet shimmer floated into the air.


	10. True Courage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aphrodite transports Ares back home, where they reunite as a couple, grounding and healing through sex, play and care. Part One: Aphrodite gives Ares pain and claims his body back.
> 
> Remember when I tagged this fic explicit? Remember that? Well, TIME TO PAY THE PIPER! Thank you so much for all your patience waiting for this instalment. This next three chapters over their long night reconnecting took some WORK and I really hope it feels satisfying! It's been an emotional ride and I'm really excited to share some damn healing at last!
> 
> [This chapter contains pretty heavy impact play and pegging, the following two chapters are much softer if that's not your jam <3]
> 
> Song: [S&M, Rihanna](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdS6HFQ_LUc)

They crashed onto the bed in a shower of violet sparks. The mattress screeched and the lights popped as they burst to life. Ares’ back thumped into the sheets and Aphrodite’s weight hit him and smothered him, elation rushing through his blood. Her mouth swarmed his face and neck. Her strong, clever hands gripped his shirt-front so hard the fabric creaked. He wrapped her, spilled his touch and tongue over her. He felt like Phineus, scrabbling ravenously for food, while the harpies inside him swooped and battered to keep him from his relief.

_ “God of War, why don’t you…” _

_ FUCK OFF! _

The voices halted, stunned. He felt them nudge him for attention, but he clung to Aphrodite, shielded himself in her, poured his focus into her.

“I love you, I love you, I love you…” He gabbled it over and over under his breath, licking her neck, burrowing into her hair, grasping her ass and gathering her onto his body. “Fuck, I love you so much.”

The words were like a summoning spell; each time he whispered them, Aphrodite rushed him, moaning, or gasping, or kissing him so hard he went light-headed and the room spun. Her torso billowed against his, as she panted and writhed, digging hollows in his body to slot even closer to him, to eliminate all space between them, to lock them together as one form. He ached for it, his flesh screamed for her. 

“I love you, Ares,” she whispered feverishly against his lips, “I love you, Honey. You’re my shore, you’re my family. I love you.”

Her voice wrapped him, gushed over him, stung and numbed and soothed, bandages on breaks, alcohol poured onto cuts. He chased the balm eagerly. He fumbled for the opening of her jacket, squashed to his chest, and shoved it off her, her arms flying back and wriggling to help him. He tugged the jacket loose and flung it across the room with the sound of a whip. His hands flew to her bare arms and ran along her soft, dusky skin. They whisked to her breasts, full and soft and firm, filling his cupping touch. He rubbed his hands in rhythmic crescents, delighting in her shape, in the swell of her breathing, in the hardening of her nipples. 

“Gods, Aph, how do you always feel better and better every time I touch you?” he murmured into her mouth, hooking her tongue and stirring it.

“Because I want you more and more every time.” 

There was a teasing growl on the end of her purr that thrummed wickedly in his cock. She bit his jaw, chafed his nipples with her thumbs through his shirt. He groaned and jolted up, feeling her welling heat, even through his jeans. Her hair swished to the side and burst lavender, as she dove and peppered his chest with kisses. Her breasts left his hands. He twisted sulkily and smeared them around her silk hair, hissing, “Yeah… Oh fuck… Aph…” 

He blinked and realised they weren’t in their bedroom. She’d transported them to the playroom. He flushed. His heart bucked. The deep cranberry walls glimmered in warm light, hung with sketched images of bound muscle and proud, curving figures. Hooks on the walls bore coils of rope and chain, floggers in leather, silk and metal, long, graceful crops, fluttering ticklers, and gleaming paddles. A tall, mahogany cabinet with glass panel doors displayed collars, gags, blindfolds, leads, bridles, and jewellery. A swing and a few wrist restraints suspended from the ceiling. An X-cross was bolted to another wall. Another cabinet contained a fountain of colour, stocked with candles and oils and balms, beside a black marble sink tucked into the corner. Large cushions padded the floor, and blankets were stacked on a shelf. A heavy velvet curtain draped over the door. The two of them writhed on a cranberry-covered bed with bronze railings topped with crystals. Everything was a perfect contrast of hard and soft; gentle, glowing light slick on wood, sinking on fabric, and glinting on metal. Ares was washed by the familiar, dizzying, comforting scent of leather and beeswax and heady, herbal rubs. It carried an onslaught of memories. He was safe here. They were in the basement of the house. They were underground. Nothing existed here. No war. No rage. No fear. No Olympus. Only Aphrodite. Only how much she loved him. Only how much he loved her.

“Tell me what you need.” Her breathless voice floated into him.

A thousand answers barrelled onto his tongue,  _ hold me, hurt me, bind me, scratch me, make me laugh, make me ache, make me come.  _ One rolled out of him, pulling his arms closer around her. “Take me back. All that shit’s still in me and it’s gonna try and drown you out. Take me back from it. Please.”

She raised off him an inch to cup his face and hold his gaze. Her round eyes swirled berry pink in the light of the room, stilling him, entrancing him. He let his breath out and stroked her glowing, plum cheek. 

“Do you trust me?” she asked tentatively.

_ “Do you? Should you?” _

_ Yes. _

_ “She used you, broke the rules.” _

_ She tried to help me. She got mixed up. She loves me. _

_ “No one loves you.” _

_ She does. No matter what you say. She loves me. _

Aphrodite’s brow creased. “I understand if…”

Ares cut her off with a kiss. He plunged his tongue deep, pressed his lips to hers fervently, cradled her in his hands to pull her close. He moved with all the reassurance he knew she needed, he knew he could give her. He pulled her over and over to his lips between whispered words. “I trust you. I do. I trust you, Beautiful.” He sucked her lip until he could feel her blood beating in it. “Make war on me.”

Aphrodite shivered. It filled his body, so did her answer. “Fates... Make love to me, Ares.”

It was a call to action. He’d been lost, adrift, convinced he was worth nothing outside of the heat of battle. Here was his purpose, here was his direction. Make love to Aphrodite, make Aphrodite feel good, pleasure her, caress her, serve her, shield her, rise to her, be brave for her. 

_ Your true courage lies in the space between us. _

_ “You’re a coward.” _

_ Not here. _

_ “Hiding behind a girl.” _

_ Shelter is nothing to be ashamed of. _

The creatures in his blood spat and churned. Aphrodite kissed him again. They halted again. It was almost as if she sensed their weakness. She pulled him hard to roll onto their sides. She coiled her arms and legs around him and forcefully reeled his kisses into her mouth, like she was operating a winch. Her skirt swept up her thigh. He stroked the roundness and sighed into her mouth. She had him caged. It was like being caught while falling. He scooped her closer. Their kiss slowed, deepened. Her mouth tasted of figs and chilli powder, she smelled of earth from the park, and lavender and aloe. She stroked around his body and he felt a strange sensation through his clothes. Then his hand on her back met hot, bare skin. He opened his eyes and saw their clothes dissolving from their bodies. 

He beamed. “Neat trick.”

Aphrodite looked at him like a wonderful, evil little pixie, as her fingers skated from vanishing cotton and denim to set his skin alight.

He nuzzled her cheek. “Leave your panties.”

“Why?” She lapped his earlobe.

“I got a trick too.”

Another moment and they were naked, but for the sweet turquoise satin of her panties. The balm-infused air of the room washed Ares’ body. He snarled in his throat and flipped Aphrodite with an adorable squeak onto her back, and grinned down at her, caging her on all fours. Her hair steamed over the sheets, her breasts bobbed up and down hypnotically, her round cheeks flushed, and her lips puckered and parted. She was more tempting than anything in the realms, than wine, than sleep, than sugar. His cock swelled. He bit his lip. He raised one hand and sneaked the back of his index under the hem of her panties. His knuckle brushed soft hair, then wet flesh. Aphrodite’s chest buoyed and her eyes fluttered. It sent a quiver through him. 

_ She wants me. _

He grit his teeth like a wolf. With a high, tearing noise, he ripped the panties from her body, easy as sweeping away a cobweb. Aphrodite squeaked, her hips thrust up to him, the light catching the exposed shimmer of her pussy and captivating Ares instantly. He tossed the panties away, already forgotten, and felt his elbows weaken, as he hovered over the passionfruit-purple gem. He floated his hand over it. Aphrodite’s spine arched and twisted, chasing his would-be touch. She pouted and balled her delicate fists. She sneaked her toe up the inside of his thigh.

_ “She’s a love goddess, she knows how to act.” _

Ares faltered at another gnash of his inner creatures’ teeth. He took a steadying breath. He reached out carefully with the tendrils of his sense. He found what he needed almost immediately. Frustration. A springy, sticky, sweet frustration. Aphrodite was getting impatient. Aphrodite wanted his touch so much that those tiny inches between his fingers and her flesh were making her angry. Deliciously so.

_ She can’t fake that. She doesn’t act for me.  _

He pounced. He swung over her and crushed his mouth to hers and cupped her pussy, clutching her firmly, but keeping his hand soft, rocking it in a speedy rhythm and spinning her desire, like he was tossing a coin. Aphrodite moaned into his mouth. Her fingernails pricked and seized his back, he shuddered. He pressed deeper. Wetness sprang into his palm. He felt her struggle like a salmon, grinding on his body so hard that he almost thought he smelled smoke. He pinned her by the mouth and clit, dragging his fingers up her labia and pressing into the hub of sensitivity. She was soft, she was gushing, the feel of her rocked him. She spasmed and growled. It buzzed on his lips, into his chest and the pit of his stomach.

It was broken by a slam to the gut, propelling him sideways. Aphrodite wriggled to plant her foot on his abs and threw him off. As he yelped and tumbled, she swept up and, before his brain had stopped whirling, she had him clamped down with her knee on his chest, kneeling up over him, her legs spread to frame her clit in the centre of his vision. He reached up to touch her again. She slapped his hand hard. The pain zipped up his arm into his body, tingling all over. He snaked moodily on the mattress. 

“Baaaabe…” he whined, “Come on, let me touch you.” His smiled poked out of the corner of his mouth. His heart picked up faster, a bubble popped in his stomach. He loved pushing at the edges of the rules, it made her breath-takingly fierce.

Aphrodite loomed over him, drawing his gaze up the curves of her body to her dazzling, amethyst eyes and her tousled tresses. She tutted, pursing her lips, cute and luscious. “Ah, ah, ah, you naughty boy. You said you needed my dominance tonight.”

Ares made a huge show of rolling his eyes. “But you’re so pretty, I changed my miiiiiind,” he whined again. He tickled the inside of her thigh, earning another slap. 

She leaned harshly, compressing his chest, making him cough. Her voice took on that prowling tone that turned him to liquid, somewhere between satin and silver blades. “You don’t have a mind, Boy. You don’t think or take or complain. You just serve. You just do as you’re told.”

The words crept through his veins. His cock rose, his muscles tightened, his mouth watered. “I don’t know.” He watched her like a mouse watches a sparrowhawk. “I’ve been the General for months, I don’t think I remember how to follow orders.” 

Aphrodite’s eyes blazed. Her surge of anger rained down on him from that electrifying stare, hitting his body in showering kisses. He caught his breath. He saw hers catch too, as his desire rocketed back into her. They had this feedback loop perfected. It echoed in his rib cage and his skull. He felt a stab of restless anxiety in the back of his brain. He glared defiantly at Aphrodite. Another wave of her fury dashed the feelings back. 

“You can always be reminded,” she hissed.

Ares didn’t even bother to talk back. He just shrugged, shifting her knee under her in the great, lazy, dismissive heave of his torso.

He flicked fiery eyes back to her. 

“Oh!” Aphrodite tossed her hair and swiped her talons across his abs, jolting him with pain, leaving clementine tracks across the sunflower yellow of his skin. “You asked for it!”

“Asked for what?” Ares widened his eyes innocently. His stomach somersaulted. His heart raced.

Aphrodite lurched off him, leaving a flushed dip on his pectoral. He stared hotly at the motion and quiver of her body, as she stood and grabbed his wrist. She pulled him hard, jarring his shoulder, another bolt of pain that batted at the encroaching nervous voices. He made a little act out of resisting her, but no matter how much muscle he put on, Aphrodite could move him like the wind blows flame. She pulled him to his feet. He stumbled against her and sank instantly into kissing her indulgently. His joints all turned to jelly, as his cock slipped between her legs and the tip slicked along her seam. 

She bit his tongue. She shoved him off. She scratched his arm, then his chest. He grumbled and snatched for her again. She cast a slap across his face that shattered sound in his ear, leaving his cheek smarting and his jaw tense.

Their eyes met. Anger. Passion. Anger. Passion.

She drew her body up, her hair cascaded about her and her muscles went taut, her legs spread, and her breasts and her belly swelled with heavy, controlled breath. She was a warrior. She was a predator. She was fucking magnificent. 

Excitement burst in Ares' abdomen. He ducked to kiss her again. She stopped his mouth with her hand, he clutched it with his own and sowed kisses down the inside of her wrist. She led him to the X-cross, large and sturdy in dark varnished wood, with steel and leather restraints glinting on the ends. She tugged his hand up to the top corner. She cuffed him and slid the buckle tight.

“What’s this for?” Ares asked with a smile. 

He leaned on his one raised, restrained arm to leer down at her, nudging her clit with his cock. She seized it and stroked him roughly. He felt like a shotgun being pumped, he nearly fired. It pulsed into his abs, he crumpled back with a groan and a rattle of the restraint.

Aphrodite clamped his chin between finger and thumb. She vowed against his lips, without sparing him a kiss, “I’m going to remind you what real pain feels like. You’ll forget all about that pathetic posturing in the lower realm. Mortals do not take gods from me.”

Ares shuddered, his back iced and heated. He reached out to cup her cheek. She caught his hand, ducked under his arm, and restrained it with another scuff and clink, and that familiar, satisfying grip. He was secured with his chest to the wood, facing the wall, the room spinning away, the blindness making his pulse sing. She ducked to cuff his ankles. As she fastened the buckles, her tongue curled out of her mouth, stopping just shy of the droplet of dew shining on his cock. It twitched towards her. His knees shook, chinking the chains.

“You’re such a fucking tease,” he chuckled.

Aphrodite stood fluidly beside him, the shadows oily on her naked body. She stole around him, staying close, muddling his senses with her scent. She lined her body to his back, coating him with softness. Her hands stroked around his abs, massaging the muscles, creeping just close enough to his cock to make him squirm. She kissed his shoulder. 

Her murmur wormed into his ear canal and down his spine. “I’m a tease? Oh, Honey Bear, you’re the tease. Just strapped up like that. Helpless and spread out like hide for tanning, like cake for decorating. Fates, what a beautiful body.” She padded her lips between his shoulder blades, he flexed them to contain another shudder. She ran her fingernails up the back of his neck, into his hair. A moan escaped him. She ran her hands back to his abs. “All that muscle. All that strength. What a strong man you are, Ares. A strong man and a pretty boy, all in one. How’s a girl meant to control herself, when all that is just laid out for her on a silver platter?” Her fingertips sneaked up to his nipples and circled. His head dropped forward again. He pressed his back into her softness. She nuzzled him, her voice dropping lower, reverberating between his thighs. “You’re such a fucking constant temptation, Boy. It never stops. And then I shackle you, to try and give myself just a little space to breathe, and it makes you even more magnetic.” She rose onto her toes, dragging her flesh along his, tacky from the heat between them. She licked his ear and whispered. “Gods, the things seeing you like this makes me want.”

Ares’ throat stoppered. He arched his spine, as his cock hardened almost painfully and jabbed forward. Her words webbed him, spun him,  _ beautiful, strong, pretty, temptation, magnetic, want, want, want.  _ His mischief trickled away. His eyes closed, the darkness bloomed cranberry. He took a shaking breath, every pore sparked with the injection of oxygen. His legs almost caved. He let the restraints hold him up, they earthed him like lightning.

“Do…” He swallowed, her fingertips on his nipples made it hard to form his thoughts. “Do whatever you want.”

She squeezed his ass hard. He wasn’t sure if the spiked grip or her hiss of satisfaction was more arousing. 

She bobbed up closer to his ear to whisper, sweeter, “You comfy, Sexy?”

He smiled with his whole body, warm and safe. “I’m good, Beautiful.”

“Not too tight? Not too high?”

He did the little testing twists of his wrists and ankles to prove he was sure. “Cosy, Ma’am.”

“Oh, I’m getting a ‘Ma’am’ already? Good boy.”

They chuckled together. She bounced up and pecked his cheek. She switched back to the sultry villain without missing a beat, trailing her nails down his spine, laughing darkly at his writhe and moan. She tapped his balls and smiled at his flinch. She slapped his ass and pinched it. 

“Mmmm. Time to make this body mine.”

Aphrodite stepped away, watching Ares’ back bow towards her, then flex deeply, carving ravines in the rolling terrain of his musculature. Energy flowed into her body at the sight of him restrained. The cuffs held his arms out over his head, mounding his biceps and drawing up his shoulder blades, accentuating the smooth line of his spine and the taper of his back to his taut, firm ass, catching a pool of pink light on the cheek. His legs were forced spread, opening his vulnerability, a captivating contradiction to the incredible might of his body. His dragon’s-hoard glimmer stood out proud against the dark, heavy X and shaded wall; fire in the hearth, flowers blooming in black peat. He was all strength and surrender, hardness and delicacy. She felt like a musician looking at the best-crafted harp in the realms. She longed to play him, to strum the deep, resounding strings of his power and pluck the soft, staccato notes of his fragility. 

_ You are Wrath. _

She could feel his passion pulsing out to her, kicked up by her eager anger like sand by women playing in the tide. It fortified her, enticed her. Ares was so generous with his emotion. He saw it as being hot-tempered, uncontrolled, dangerous. All over Olympus they called him a child, a loose cannon, difficult and brash and unreasonable. But to her, it was a gift. While everyone else withheld themselves, would rather starve her than admit even a scrap of weakness, Ares nourished her. He released his passions, he let them run free, and they charged into her, blazed in her, carried her up to soar. Ares was the only one brave enough not to live behind walls. Ares was the only one brave enough to feed her power. Ares’ bravery made her truly feel like a Goddess of Love. All she had to do was remind him of how brave he was.

_ Conquer me, bring me to my fucking knees. _

Aphrodite smiled.

She swept to the cabinet of leather and jewellery. She fitted a filigree bracelet over her wrist, with fine, silver chains leading up to caps over her fingers that came to long, harsh claws. She went to the wall of whips. She ran her hands along silk and leather handles, choosing her weapon like a priestess being spiritually drawn to a ritual knife. Her fingers landed like fireflies on the tough, interlace pommel of a braided leather flogger. It was large, its hilt hefty, its thick bunch of tails streaming down in winding black and lilac to knotted tips glinting with jagged, diamond beads. She bit her lip and her belly wriggled pleasantly. The scent of leather warmed her core. She unhooked the flogger and tested its weight in her palm, swishing the tresses and rotating her wrist. Power surged in her arm. She hooked the strap over her wrist and returned to stand a couple of paces back from Ares. She could see his breath moving through him gingerly, his ass taut, as the anticipation thickened his cock.

“OK, Soldier. Are you ready to be disciplined?” she asked in a low, dangerous voice.

Ares’ head tilted, his curls jostling. “Why should I be disciplined, Ma’am?” His husk laced with an invisible smile, turned away from her.

So, he wasn’t quite done being cheeky. Excellent. Aphrodite combed her fingers through the leather tails, so Ares could hear the diamonds clack together. His head straightened, his ears pricking up like a fox’s. She grinned. “Because I say so. Because it would please me. Don’t you want to please me, Boy?”

Ares rolled his shoulders. “You gonna please me too?”

Clack, clack, clack went the diamonds, point to point. “Yes. Because pleasing me pleases you. Pleasing me is your only true pleasure. Isn’t that right?”

Ares groaned and slinked. “Yeah, that’s right.”

Aphrodite felt acutely aware of her nakedness, of how easily she could touch every inch of her skin to his. She prickled with impatience. She saw him shudder, as it leaked into him. She shuddered too, as his passion returned along the current. 

“And what pleases me,” Aphrodite continued in her lethal lilt, “Is testing that beautiful body. I want to see what it can take for me. I want to see it break.”

Ares moved like a python in vines. His breathless chuckle crackled like embers. “Hit me with your best shot.”

“Hit me with your best shot,  _ what _ ?”

“Hit me with your best shot, Ma’am.”

“Good boy.”

She swished the flogger over her head. Ares’ back went rigid. She cast it down. The knots and diamonds rained through the air and avalanched across Ares’ skin. He flinched and hissed through his teeth. The restraint chinked. A fine set of thread-thin, amber tracks sketched down his back. 

“How was that?” Aphrodite asked softly.

Ares took a deep breath, expanding his back and tugging the amber trails. “That was good,” he breathed.

“Safe word?”

“Peace.”

“Use it, if you need.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

She swept and struck again, harder this time, the diamonds cackling as they clattered together and tumbled down his flesh. She struck again straight after, this time across his ass, her stomach fluttering as his buttocks clenched and he jerked forward. Then again, on his thigh, making one knee buckle and the cuffs creak. 

“You go pink so quickly,” she said with a smirk, “That pretty skin has got out of practice.”

Ares slinked and mumbled.

“I just want to make a real mess out of you.”

Ares’ trembling was mesmerising. “I’m already a mess around you, Ma’am.”

“Then I’ll turn you into a wreck.”

“Oh, yeah, fucking wreck me.”

She thrashed him. He moaned wildly. She picked up her pace. She avoided a steady rhythm, leaving intermittent, unpredictable pauses between strikes, so each one was a fresh shock. His flinching turned to spasms, springing onto his toes, writhing and bucking and struggling, straining the restraints, even making the cross itself groan. She rolled her shoulder and poured her strength into the motions of whipping him, moving her arm in great circles, the diamonds flailing overhead and catching the glow, then showering, as if she was flinging starlight down on undulating cornfields. His muscles crumpled and jutted, stark in the reddening light. He threw his head back, his hair flashing gold. 

“Make noise for me, Boy.”

His soft moans boiled into grating cries. The diamonds hit him with the sound of hailstones on granite. His voice dropped low, shaking the floor, the foundations of the house. His back and ass and thighs flushed the colour of sap, covered in a mess of fine scratches and scores, as if he’d fallen through a briar patch. He fidgeted feverishly. His need - his raw, boyish adoration - rushed along that invisible cord between them, bringing her wildly to life. 

“You know what this says, Boy?” She struck him hard, with a sharp snapping of leather. “That you’re so enslaved to me that you’d rather I gave you pain, than anything else gave you pleasure.”

Ares’ breath gravelled in his throat. “Yes, Ma’am.”

“Talk to me about it.”

Ares’ arms bulged, his neck stretched, he was earthing himself. His voice came rushed and raw. “Gods, I love the pain you give me. I’d rather be a beggar here than a king anywhere else. I’m at your feet. I just want to feel you, Goddess. Pain lets me feel you so powerfully. That’s everything I want.”

She flogged him. He moaned sonorously and ground against the cross. 

“Fuck, I’m on fire,” he whispered.

“Is it too much?” she checked.

“No.” He gulped and his spine ridged through his skin, pushing towards her. “It’s fucking incredible.”

She flung herself into his desire, each strike cast up by the leap of his spirit. The cracks and snaps and crackles punctured his constant stream of spellbound murmurs and groans. She felt like a river bursting its banks. His cries levelled out and hushed, his shoulder blades rising and falling slowly, like sweeping wings. 

She paused and breathed carefully to keep herself controlled.

“Still with me?” she murmured gently.

Ares’ fingers splayed and he gripped the edges of the cross so hard that the veins popped on the backs of his hands. He nodded, panting roughly. “I’m here, Ma’am. Keep going.”

“Can you take it?”

“I can take it.”

“Are you going to ask nicely for it?”

“Please, Ma’am. Please, Mistress. Please give me more.” 

His pleading thrilled her. The flogger’s tresses tossed and eddied. She thrust out her free hand and spread her bare feet, keeping her stance strong. The bracelet tangled with pink light, as if the claws were stained with blood. With a loud, harsh lash, Ares’ blood sprang in a few microscopic beads in the diamonds’ tracks. They glistened in his mist of sweat. Her heart and clit thrummed. She whipped him in a large sweep and dashed the droplets across his skin, painting him the hue of desire. 

“Fuck… Please…”

His skin began to glimmer intensely. A bright, hot glow rose from inside him. He shone like the sunrise. Brighter than in the park. Brighter than the day he stepped through the kitchen door. 

Her Ares was coming back to life. 

Ares planted himself against the hard wood of the cross and grit his teeth. The flogger pelted him with stinging. It was like flying through a wasps’ nest. The diamonds grazed over and over, biting deeper, as his skin became more and more inflamed. Their teeth sank down into his flesh, gnawed him, left him burning so the next strike flared hotter. His cock pounded with every lash. He dropped his head down. His face heated, as he saw the small puddle on the floor between his legs, dripping from his straining arousal. The sweet ache for more warred with the lancing pain, colliding at his core, throwing him into a careening, breathless delight. 

_ “Pathetic, letting this girl beat you.” _

_ Yeah? How many other people would dare? _

His body rang. He felt pulverised, shredded. But it wasn’t defeat. It was rebirth. The flogger shattered the shell he’d cooped himself up in for too long. As it split him open, he felt all the vicious, bestial feelings he’d been enclosing in his heart flurry and flock. Fear shocked him. He began to shake violently. The more he opened himself to the wonderful pain Aphrodite gave him, the more pathways the creatures found. He instinctively began to steal himself against them, scrabbling to block the paths, to seal himself shut again. 

_ We are an ecosystem. _

_ Don’t block her out. Be brave. True courage. Surrender. _

He gripped the cross. He took a deep, slow breath, tasting her sweet, cinnamon anger on the air. It was no longer impatience for his touch, it was something more; it was intent, it was protective. She was here to claim him. She was here to slay monsters - all the terror and rage and sorrow and doubt coursing under his skin. He pushed it into his spine. The flogger hit the convergence of creatures like a grenade, blowing them apart, propelling them from his body. It wasn’t that Aphrodite’s pain was harsher or louder, drowning out the violence. It’s that it was cleaner, it pierced deeper. It flushed him out, like gin and peppermint gushing through his blood. Each strike left him feeling cleansed, refreshed. He plunged into a pool of stinging and burning. He swam in the first freedom he’d felt in months.

He rode the rapids as long as he could, until the enlivening shocks of pain began to tip over into a duller, pervading soreness. He opened his mouth to speak. The room dissolved. He felt light, disconnected. He loved it, he relaxed irresistibly into it. It was the lotus island. But somewhere, he knew he was drifting too far. 

He tried to swim back. He couldn’t find solid ground.

All he could hear was the sloughing sound of his own breathing. 

Then, through the haze…

“Honey Bear? How are you doing? Talk to me.”

He exhaled long and loud, forcing himself towards the voice. 

“Peace,” he whispered.

He heard the crop thunk to the ground. Warmth spread through his body. Aphrodite was immediately beside him, kissing his shoulder and stroking his arms and hair.

“Well done,” she murmured, softer than down, than moonlight, “I’m so proud of you, my strong, brave boy. Well done. You took all that? That was amazing. I love you so much, my sweet favourite.” 

She cooed into his ear, catching him in his freefall and cradling him, like a stalk, gliding back down to earth and resting him there, safe and still. Ares’ awareness gradually returned - the room and its comforting scent and the hum of the pipes in the walls, the hard cross imprinting his torso, the snug cuffs on his wrists and ankles, the graze of his feet grinding on the floor. The last cinnamon flicker of Aphrodite’s delicious wrath. 

The cocoon of blurring pain around his body melted away. The soft, humming sting of the scratches and pummels from the flogger phased into definition on his back and ass. He dropped his head heavily onto the cross beam along his arm. 

Aphrodite rubbed his neck. “How do you feel?”

He wasn’t sure how to answer. He felt everything. He felt nothing. 

“You OK, Honey?”

He managed to nod. His head lolled, blindly seeking her mouth. She raised onto her toes, washing him with her scent, and kissed him. Her kiss was nectar. He sucked on her lip softly and sighed. 

Another sensation came back to him. The ache. The desperate ache. All his awareness drained to his cock, to the point of merciless want sapping all his sense, screaming over the pain. She was so powerful, so beautiful. Gods, how did he live before he belonged to her? He heard a weak noise slip from this throat. He pushed himself into her kiss. She received him lovingly, cupping his cheek and dancing her tongue on his, coiling his core and making his skin fizz. He made another pitiful, pleading sound, his face flushing with the silliness of it. Aphrodite pulled back and brushed her lips over his, he could feel her smiling.

She kissed his cheek and giggled. She must have been able to feel how hot his blush was. “I know, Lemon Cake, I know what you need."

He groaned sulkily, as she left his side. The soreness rose in his back without the balm of her closeness, it itched and nibbled like nettles. He twisted in his bonds, his hips scooping instinctively, as his cock strained. The sharp and dull pains from the flogger and frustration strummed back and forth, wrestling for which got to torment him. When she returned, with an amused tutting and a teasing lap on the nape of his neck, his heart buoyed and his stomach flipped.

“Where’d you go?” he whined, flowing into the press of her breasts to his back. It sparked the soreness, but he didn’t care. He snaked his spine to tease her nipples with the edges of his shoulder blades.

“Just to get something.” She kissed a cut from the flogger and he shuddered.

“What, Boss?” he husked. 

Anticipation tightened in his abdomen and pooled in his pores. Aphrodite kissed another light wound. She nudged her hips forward. The smooth, round tip of something firm bumped his ass. 

The strap-on. 

Ares soared.

His instant eagerness must have rushed in a clamorous scramble into Aphrodite, she bunched his curls in one fist and kissed him fiercely. He returned it with zeal, his breath coming short, his pulse rocketing.

“Can I collar you first?” Aphrodite asked on a warm flicker of laughter.

Ares' answer coursed out of him, hoarse and tangled around her tongue. “Yeah, fuck, yeah, collar me. Own me, Beautiful.”

She moaned into his mouth, making him quiver. She pulled from him, both of them clinging on until the very last of their reach. He rolled his neck straight. The soft, cushioned-leather collar swept down over his face and settled on his throat. It prodded his larynx lightly, as Aphrodite fastened it at the nape. She released him and stroked his shoulders, her touch sinking through his muscle.

“Comfy?”

“Perfect.”

The feeling of the collar earthed him. The restraints tied him down, but the collar did more. It gave him a sense of place. It fit him to her love, no, fit him within it. Enclosed him in it. Homed him in it.

He heard the pop of a tube being squeezed. His back broke out in a fresh sweat that hissed in his scratches. Something cool and slick slid between his buttocks. Ice and magma poured through his body. He shuddered and sighed. With one hand, Aphrodite spread lube around his entrance, teasing it softly open and sending pulses of excitement to his core. Her other hand, she had armoured in silver claws, which she trailed lightly around his torso, embracing softly with one arm and pricking his abs and nipples, lighting sparklers where she touched. She palmed the tip of his cock and slid her lubed finger to his perineum, as she lapped his shoulder. The pure pleasure flooded him. He moaned and almost lost his footing, stars bursting behind his eyes. She curled her fingers around his cock and stroked softly. His breath rattled out of him. She rolled his balls in her hand and squeezed gently. She guided the strap-on carefully to his entrance. 

He held his breath. 

His eyes widened on the sight of her clawed hands working his cock steadily, sending pulses through him, the points just missing his skin. He was seeping over her hand. Still, she didn’t enter him. She rubbed the tip of the strap-on up and down and around, stoking the want in him, until he was sure he was going to erupt into flame. He tried to ask her to pierce him. He tried to beg. His voice strangled in his throat. He whimpered and arched his spine and pushed his ass towards her insistently. Her low, mocking laugh turned him cold, then explosively hot. 

“Aw, is my boy too hard to wait?” She squeezed his cock. “Does he want Ma’am to fuck him like the sweet little thing he is?” She sucked his neck. “Does he want her in his pretty ass?”

Ares prickled shy. His courage stirred against it. He nodded breathlessly.

“I want to hear you, Pretty Boy.”

_ Sweet. Pretty. Brave. _

“I want you to fuck me,” he panted, his whole body beating with need, “Take me, Aphrodite.”

The strap-on sneaked into his relaxed ass, seizing him with sensation, but it stayed infuriatingly shallow.

“How much do you want it?” she whispered like silk.

Ares groaned, his brow creasing. “So… much…” His chest rose and fell in harried breaths, he couldn’t keep his hips still, his wrists writhed in the bonds. “Now… Please, Ma’am… Gods, please, I can take all the pain you throw at me, but I can’t take waiting for you.”

Her lips pressed to his shoulder. It was warm and caressing and lingering. 

She slid into him like a sheathing sword.

Bolts of pleasure banged through Ares. His throat tensed with an ecstatic cry and the collar clasped him. She was deep, she was at his centre. There was nothing he could bar her from now, the siege was breached. Let her storm into him. Let her sack him. Let her be crowned queen of the wreckage and rebuild it greater than ever before.

_ You surrender to me. And that, Ares, that is unmatched bravery. _

Aphrodite lingered a moment, let him adjust to the intimacy. Then she began to move, driving slowly into him, as she stroked his cock and dragged the claws around his torso and sunk them into his firm thigh and ass, just dusted his balls with them, then palmed the sensitive skin and rolled. 

"Oh… Fuck… Aphrodite…"

Ares was thrown between sensations; the stinging on his back, the aching in his raised arms, the pricking on his nipples, and the biting on his thigh all crashed into the pumping of his cock and the sonorous hammer-strikes to his core that made pleasure echo in his nerves. He shuffled and writhed and thrust, begging for more with the rasping of his breath and the restlessness of his body. The effort of taking this standing, of having to hold himself as if he wasn’t coming completely apart, ached almost as much as his desire. 

Aphrodite grasped his hip and pulled herself deeper. He choked and moaned and dug his fingernails into the wood beneath them. She set his pace, guiding his frantic bucking into a pendulum rhythm, sliding deeper and deeper, gripping his cock hard. He whimpered and moaned. He thought he was speaking, praying, but he couldn’t be sure. His pulse carried every strike of pleasure around his body, fuelling him, uplifting him. 

“Mmmm, that’s my Ares,” Aphrodite murmured breathlessly in his ear with a mocking, satisfied tone, “Strong and eager and broken in, like all good steeds.”

He shivered. He laughed. He ground backwards against her, whisking his want wilder, losing his grip on it. 

“You’re so fucking hard, you easy thing.” She licked the rim of his ear. “I love how you feel in my hand. I can feel you getting even bigger, I can feel you pulsing. You’re so desperate. It’s the cutest damn thing.”

He moaned. His smile spread, dizzy and ridiculously broad. His back and abs bloomed with sweat, crunching rapidly as she steered them faster. He chafed on the cross, driven hard against it. His fingers ached, clutching the wooden beam to hold himself up.

“You’re so close,” she teased, the ghost of a moan in her voice, “It’s driving me wild. It’s somehow always a surprise how fast you come when I fuck you. Gods, I love how easy it is to move in you, how deep you take me. This body is so fucking beautiful. Gods, what an ass you've got.” She slapped it. 

Ares laughed again. It tumbled into a puppy whine, as she grasped him tight and urged their thrusts, the clap of her thighs to the backs of his legs thudding into his coursing cock. She pounded his core, waves of sensation overtaking each other, turning into one railing note in his nerves.

“You want to come, Boy?”

Ares choked on another moan, flexing under the collar, a slick of sweat on the underside of the leather. 

“Well?”

He raced to reply, pushing his ass out so far it pulled his hamstrings. “Fuck, yes, Aph, make me come.” 

“You sure?” 

The taunt in her voice was oil on the fire. Her breasts chafed his scratches and his sweat sizzled in them. His shoulders and thighs felt like splitting oak. He barrelled brutally into her fist around his cock, the pleasure so intense it almost hurt.

“Please, Ma’am, my princess, my keeper. Please, I can hardly breathe.”

“I still don’t know if you’re desperate enough.” 

He was. He definitely was. He was ripping at the seams. The restraints rattled and clanged. The cross creaked with the force of their hammering thrusts. 

“I’m so fucking desperate. Gods, the things you do to me, you fucking queen of torture.”

She cackled and upped the pace again, pumping his cock so hard and fast that the claws flashed in silver streaks. 

“I like it when you beg.”

“I am begging you. I’m really fucking begging you.”

Drum rolls of pleasure through his body.

“Again.”

“Please, please, fuck, please…”

Fast. Deep. Hard. The crazed swishing of their breath. The slap of flesh.

“Please, Gods, I can’t… I… Fuck, I’m…”

“Come for me, Pretty.”

He fired like a cannon. A wild, coarse cry ripped from his belly. Relief and pleasure and heat tore around his body. He climaxed twice in harmony; one piercing high note in his cock, as the intensity of the stimulation broke and streamed, one trembling chord at his core that vibrated in his bones. It kept coming, spilling out of him in waves and waves, draining him. 

“Fuck, Oh My Gods, Fates, Fuuuuu…” He collapsed. He crumpled against the cross, limp as a fished squid. His sweat frosted on his skin. 

Aphrodite sank against him, worn out from the propulsion. Her mouth opened on his shoulder blade and she sneaked her tongue over the salt of his sweat. She hugged his middle and pressed her cheek into the hard cushion of his muscle. Their breathing slowed in unison. 

Ares felt plundered, utterly claimed and conquered. He felt renewed, everything jagged and rotten hewn out of him, the hollows left filled with Aphrodite. Everything became Aphrodite, even inside his body. He was light. He was heavy. He was dreaming. He sucked his lip, his heartbeat thudding.

"Mmm, my boy came real hard for me, huh?" Aphrodite's sly voice crept to him through the happy haze. 

She gave his spent cock a soft squeeze, pushing a small aftershock through him that made him gasp and chuckle. Her fingers moved a little in the sticky residue of his release. He blushed. 

"That was…" He lost his words. His eyes were still closed, tumbling in the darkness. "Wow…"

Aphrodite kissed his back, her sigh soothing the ache in his shoulders. 

"I just made you mine," she said softly. 

"Oh, yeah…" Ares moaned, "I'm all yours, Mistress."


	11. Song, Skin and Soul

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aphrodite transports Ares back home, where they reunite as a couple, grounding and healing through sex, play and care. Part Two: Aftercare.
> 
> Song: [Burning Desire, Lana Del Rey](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chsnOSzLjJk)

After a long, breathless moment, Aphrodite carefully withdrew the strap-on from Ares' supple body, smiling at the sticky sound of lube on tender skin. 

She undid his restraints. He drooped immediately and she darted to take his weight. She guided him with her arm around his middle to the bed. They sat, she tucked into the crook of his arm. His eyes were dreamy ruby and his mouth and shoulders sloped. His bright glow dimmed to an oil lamp flicker, still lively and warm. She snuggled into his side and breathed his charred, honey scent. His arm curled around her, bundling her, like a blanket by a hearth on a rainy day. He kissed her, sleepy and cloying. She stroked his chest and sank into it, her cheeks glimmering and her chest swelling. 

He grumbled, as she slipped from his embrace. She beamed back at him. She went to the sink, unbuckled the strap-on and claw bracelet, dropped them in, and washed her hands. She wandered to the herbal cabinet and brought back a lilac tub. She started to arrange him on the bed, chuckling and tickling him every time he tipped playfully into her hands and almost squashed her under his toppling weight. He smiled like a drunk, nuzzled her neck, pecked her cheek. She prickled with warmth, having to push hard against the urge to skip aftercare and pounce on him and wrestle him, like the silly cub he was being now. But his back was a mess, stained and scattered with flushed, angry marks, and she knew that once the high wore off they would get too sore. She rolled him to lie on his front, tucking a pillow under his head, coiling one of his tousled curls around her finger. He bunched his arms under the pillow and settled down with a sigh. She stroked his temple. He peeked at her with a shy gleam, then his eyes fluttered closed. 

She popped open the pot and a plume of floral, tingling fragrance curled up from the creamy balm. Lavender and marigold, one to calm and one to clean. She scooped a dollop onto her fingertips and smoothed it across Ares’ back. Relaxation rolled through him, as her hand travelled up and down his spine. She felt him turn pleasingly to putty. She tucked herself by his side and spread the balm like butter over the scarred terrain, following the tracks of the flogger and the paths of his muscle, soothing his wounds and massaging his frame. He’d been hardened and knotted by the months of rough living and violent work. She found solid nubs of tension, and pressed in firm circles until they crumbled away. She fit the heel of her hand over ridges of stiffened flesh, and worked them, like a pestle, until they softened. She strummed the tendons contracting around his joints, and eased them out. She padded over the tiny tears in his skin, and cooled their reddened edges. 

She lathered the balm on him in thick layers, rubbing deep into his flesh, so the lulling, cleansing sensation trickled through him and bloomed around them both in a cloud of comfort. He shone like a polished gem. Her hands slid easily over his body, folding to the shape of his furrows and the satisfying mound of his ass. She let herself go limp, swaying and slouching with the steady rise and fall of his breathing under her hands. Her mind fogged with the scent and the longed-for feel of his flesh. She abandoned time and thought and tactic, she tranced like a priestess in the vapours, feeling her way through omens and devotions on his body. 

His hand slid from under his pillow, his knuckles brushed her calf. She turned to him, one shy ruby emerging from where he had smothered his face in the pillow. 

“Will you sing?” he mumbled.

She warmed. She picked up his hand, kissed it, and folded it back under his head. She went back to massaging him. The flow of motion drew a song from her lips.

“I will plait white violets,

Myrtle, and soft narcissus too.”

Running her hands over his body was more satisfying than food and wine. She felt cuddled by the warmth between them, the familiarity. Her touch wandered old roads and she saw them anew, newly beautiful, newly welcoming. 

“I will twine laughing lilies

And sweet crocus, purple hyacinths,

And the roses lovers cherish.”

He was delectably tactile, just hard enough to sink her strength into, just soft enough to nestle in and sleep. Warmer than coffee. Just as reviving.

“The wreath I set

On your lovely brow

Will scatter petals on your scented hair.”

This was what really made her feel powerful. Binding him, whipping him, pegging him, they gave her a thrill, they were electric, they connected her to him, like she was hooking up to a battery. But this, this was drawing energy from the centre of the earth, this was rejuvenation. She still tingled from where his passion had raced into her. But now, just as she soothed his tender flesh, he soothed her impatience, washing her in a steady stream of pure, shining, trusting love, like morning dew on roses. The pink-tinged light of the room floated over them, like chiffon, it and the scent of the balm veiling them in contentment, protected and hidden from the rest of the world. She slipped into another song, in a more haunting, ethereal key.

“I’m a nobody,

No one special,

A nothing - 

Yet even I am loved.

Even I am the master 

Of someone else’s soul.”

She finished the song and it ghosted away into the air, infusing with the fragrance and glimmer in the cauldron of comfort they bathed in. Ares’ breathing was slow and shallow. His face was turned towards her, on its side, crushed into the pillow. His eyes were closed and his fringe cast a frayed shadow over his cheeks. She stroked its edges.

“Are you asleep, Honey?” she murmured.

Ares stirred. That one pretty ruby winked open again. He shook his head, snuffling in the pillow.

“Do you need to?” she asked.

The light slipped over Ares’ varnished back, as he rolled heavily onto his side, propping himself up on one elbow. His cherry blush smeared messily across his cheeks, his chest flushed apricot from the heat of lying on his front. His musk sneaked into the heady, medicinal perfume. His cock had half-swelled again, recovering and stirring back to life at the depth of her touch. He reached out and traced his fingertips over the low scoop of her belly, just above the crest of curls vanishing into her lap. 

A smokey smile stole over his lips. “How am I supposed to sleep when my queen hasn’t had her pleasure yet?”

Aphrodite pressed her lips together, feeling her skin sparkling. She leaned over him, crawling forward with a vixen smile. Ares grinned. Their lips met. She leaned to him on all fours. His hand moved between her legs and unfurled on her pussy, flooding her with heat, his thumb softly stirring her clit. She moaned into his mouth. The dimmed flames of her desire flared again. She slid her knees apart on the sheets and rocked her hips into his hand. His tongue delved into her mouth. His sigh over her lips made her quiver. He teased her seam and palmed her labia, heat pulsing out across her abdomen and running down her legs. She writhed on all fours like a cat, pressing her pussy into his touch. He made a small, pleased sound in his chest, it reverberated in her core. Their tongues tangoed and their mouths moulded to each other. The tangy, floral, thick air made her dizzy. She felt Ares’ clever, confident fingers become the only real, solid things in the realms. She delighted in the ease between them, the leisurely lust, the warmth of trust and comfort and humour and attraction, the natural impulse to touch, to always, constantly touch. She felt aglow with it.

She waited until the pulses of pleasure turned to tremors, holding onto the maddening sweetness of Ares’ exploration, until she couldn’t keep herself together another moment. With a heave of her willpower, she pulled from him, sucking hard on his lower lip, beaming at how it tugged out and sprang back and kicked a hungry smile onto his lips. Her pussy ached brutally, as the last tickle of his fingertips fell away.

“Don’t go,” he whispered with a pout.

“I’ll be right back, there’s something else I want to play.”

She poked his nose and he snapped and caught her finger in his teeth and sucked it. She shimmied with excitement, and vanished in a burst of violet stars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The songs Aphrodite sings are Ancient Greek love poems, translated by Bradley P. Nystrom in the book "The Song of Eros: Ancient Greek Love Poems". The first song, about braiding a flower wreath, is by Meleagros, born c. 140 B.C. and known for erotic epigrams (I tweaked a couple of lines to work for Ares). The second song is by Bianor, born in the first century B.C. in modern Turkey.


	12. Release

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aphrodite transports Ares back home, where they reunite as a couple, grounding and healing through sex, play and care. Part Three: Aphrodite playfully takes the power out of Ares' fear that his job is his only identity. Also, just some good old fashioned fuckin'.
> 
> Song: [Temple of Love, The Sisters of Mercy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWEY0dh1sgU)

Ares groaned happily and collapsed back onto the bed. He rolled in the sheets, like a kitten in a box of ribbons. He covered his face with his hands and huffed out hard, it skipped into a laugh. 

He’d somehow forgotten just how good she made him feel. Her touch devoured his thoughts while he was away, but it was the sort of thing that you couldn’t remember, you couldn’t even imagine, until you were in the thick of it. It was like a field of flowers. As long as you weren’t in it, you could tell people that it was pretty, that it smelled sweet, that the air was fresh and the ground was soft. You knew the sorts of colours you’d seen and the vague details of common species. But you had to be there, enveloped in it, to see the delicacy of detail, to really understand its beauty, to really appreciate the harmony of warmth and colour and brightness. Reading a spell on a scroll was very different to falling under it.

_Witch. Perfect, wonderful enchantress._

He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. His back tingled pleasantly. His core felt like warm butter. His cock and his ass and his cheeks prickled, as he thought about the heat of her pussy in his hand, and the wicked twinkle in her eyes when she vanished. Aphrodite could play forever, she turned life into a fantastic carnival, coming back to her was a carousel ride. He laughed again. He rocked up to sit. He spied a coil of rose pink, silk rope on a nearby hook. He grinned. He sprang up, retrieved it, and settled himself back on the bed, sitting on the edge, opening his thighs, making himself ready for her. He worked his cock a little thicker. He clamped the coil of rope in his teeth. He mussed his fringe. He leaned back on his palms to present his body, warming at his sudden confidence of how easily he could tempt her. 

He waited.

He opened himself to the quiet. He hadn’t let himself do that since arriving home. He had been working so furiously to douse the ferocity inside him that nothing had felt quiet for days. Anxiety tinged him at the edges. Alone in the silence, he could feel the bestial pollution in his system still. The cruel voices were dormant, subdued, driven back, but if he turned his attention to them, they blinked awake. He dug his fingers into the mattress.

_She’ll be back in a second. Stay in the present. Stay on the ground._

_“Do you think she got bored of you? You don’t have a lot to offer off the battlefield, do you?”_

_Don’t listen._

_“Or maybe…”_

A burst of sparkling purple. Ares snapped his head up and he pushed himself back to attention. His heart kicked and the voices fizzed away in the electric crackle in the air, as Aphrodite reappeared in front of him. 

“Sorry, Sunbeam, too excited to keep my fingers straight doing all the buttons.”

The shimmer cleared and Ares’ cheeks and ears burned, as he saw her. Her long, sculpted legs were bare right up the very top of her thigh, a sliver of shadow just veiling the well of pleasure he thirsted for. But her top half was dressed in the last thing he expected. His military uniform. His shirt collar stood wide around her neck, his tie done up tight and severe. His medal-laden jacket encased her in gold-embellished navy blue. His cap sat at a jaunty angle on her head, shading her brow so her eyes glittered beneath it, even brighter than the medals. It was comically large on her, she looked like she’d been packaged for transport. The only thing that wasn’t his was a pair of tall, dark blue stilettos, the patent leather gleaming, the heels fluting to a point that made his mouth go dry and his cock twitch. 

Aphrodite took in the sight of him spread for her, holding the rope in his mouth, one eyebrow quirked at her outfit. She slipped her fingertip between her teeth. She smiled at him greedily. She sashayed towards him, the medals flashing, her sweet, little hands poking out of his huge sleeves to rest on her hips. She stroked his cheek, then hooked the rope out of his mouth on the crook of her finger.

Ares rolled his jaw and swallowed. “Whatcha doing there, Ma’am?”

She teased the rope between her fingers. “Well, apparently I’m tying you up like a pretty little present to myself.”

“I mean the outfit.”

“This?” Aphrodite batted her eyes and gave him an innocent, infuriatingly kissable pout. “It’s just an outfit. Anyone can wear it.” She took a few slow steps towards him, her legs extending elegantly one in front of the other, the light stroking up and down them. She stopped between his legs and stroked his jaw with her fingernail. “Anyone can be a soldier if they put this on. It’s just a costume. It’s nonsense.” She leaned down and pecked his lips softly. “It takes someone special to be a warrior. And that person doesn’t need all these trappings. Doesn't need to be on some king's battlefield. He’s a warrior whatever he wears, wherever he is, fighting for what he believes in, protecting the people he loves.” She trailed her touch down his chest. “He’s just as powerful naked in his bed.”

Ares gazed at her. She smelled of the lavender balm, it was delicious and drugging. She circled her foot around his and tapped his ankle with her toe. He closed his legs obediently, bringing his knees between hers. She sank astride his lap. The closeness of her face to his dizzied him. He caught her mouth and moaned, as she kissed him ardently. His hands drifted to her. Her thighs filled his grasp. He pulled her closer, sliding skin to skin with the sensuous snarl of friction. He indulged in the firm softness of her thighs and ass, his hands roving slowly around her, feeling for the tiny scoop of her hips when his fingers drew closer to her barely concealed pussy, an inch from his cock. His blood pounded. 

She pulled from his lips and fell vampirically to his neck. Her hungry kiss on the sensitive skin melted through his body. He lost his voice and vision. He dropped his head back, stretching his neck for her willingly. She eased his hands from her body and folded them gently behind his back. She kept her mouth on him, as she reached round him to bind him. The silk rope whispered over the tingling skin of the insides of his wrists. It slithered round and round and up and up, looping his wrists crossed at the small of his back, then weaving up his forearms to his biceps, securely harnessing his arms. Her tongue slithered too, leaving a trail of velvet and ice just above the rim of his leather collar, making it feel tighter, heavier. His shoulders were pulled back, as she tugged the final knot, his chest billowed out and his nipples scuffed the medals and sparked. Her teeth grazed his neck. He moaned again. 

She cupped his face and brought him back into a kiss. He felt his mouth turn hungry and sloppy, all his form forgotten in the high of being bound with her body so close. Nothing reminded him of his own strength like rope, he flexed instinctively against it and felt it bite him and meet hard muscle, felt it strain and fray against the way he struggled when he wanted to touch her.

A thin thread of saliva conjoined their lower lips, as Aphrodite dragged her mouth from his. She slid from his lap and stood tall. She giggled with the sound of a coin hitting a pool. She beamed at him, dazzling, scheming. The corner of his mouth tugged up. She pointed one toe, her knee swinging out and opening her body. Her hip jutted. She ran her hands through the ends of her pretty, pastel hair. 

She snapped her fingers. 

Music. Speakers clicked on and a sighing, sultry song with a popping beat rose in the room. 

Ares’ smile rose with it, rose and fountained from his face down his whole body. He bit his lip and cocked a flirtatious eyebrow at Aphrodite. “OK, I think I know what’s happening.”

“Smart boy.” She crinkled her nose playfully. 

He laughed. She bumped her hip to a throb in the music. His heart thudded. Then the beat took her. She spun, dropped, rose, whipped. She moved like a ribbon in the wind, smiling cockily at his slack-jawed stare. She shimmied her shoulders and drew sorceress circles with her toes. She ran her hands lavishly up her torso and her fingers jostled through the medals, tinkling and glinting. She unclipped one and flung it behind her.

“Hey!” Ares barked in surprise.

“What?” She unclipped another.

“Those are…”

“What? Important?”

Ares’ mouth went dry. Nothing seemed important all the time Aphrodite was clothed, except reversing the situation. But those damn drops of gold were all he felt he had to show for himself sometimes.

“I guess?” he croaked.

She twirled towards him and scored down his chest with the sun-ray spikes of the medal between her fingers, snagging his nipple and sending a shock of pleasure through him. 

“Trinkets, Honey,” she said, “You’re important.” 

The medal dropped to the floor. She leaned in to kiss him, he leaned forward eagerly, aching at her words. With a rapid _snick,_ another golden disc was freed and his lips met cold metal, as she put it between them with a wink. She stood, flipped it like a coin, caught it, and tossed it away, flashing him a pixie grin. Ares laughed brashly, her joy dimming his reliance on the cold metal. She tipped his cap and spun to put her back to him. Bubbles of mirth jetted through his chest, as two more medals clanked between her spread feet. Then the bubbles burst scalding, as she clapped her hands to the backs of her thighs, and drew them up to raise the hem of the boxy jacket and reveal the bubblegum roundness of her naked ass. Ares bit his lip, aching again. She folded forward, swinging her hips round to draw his eyes, as if they weren’t fixed on her with hardened sealant already. She slapped herself and a delightful tremor skimmed along the flesh. 

“Fuck, Babe…” Ares gasped, the rope cutting, as he lurched forward to squeeze her and it held him back, bittersweet.

She flipped back to stand. She threw a haughty look over her shoulder that felled him. “What happened to Ma’am? You can tell I’m Ma’am because I’m the one in all the fucking brocade, right?”

“You’re Ma’am all the time,” Ares husked. 

Aphrodite shot him a significant look. Her meaning sparkled in his mind. _If I’m so special without any costume, so are you. You’re somebody here. This uniform doesn't own you. I do. I'm going to put it in its place._

Ares beamed. He blushed. He felt himself opening and fluttering like a book. 

_Even I am the master of someone else’s soul._

Aphrodite’s amethyst eyes turned smokey quartz, hardening him to oak. She spun to face him, with a bounce of her hip, showing the jacket stripped bare. Her fingers wound up the buttons, as she peeked at him from under the shadow of the cap, her body winding in the same rhythm. She sneaked the jacket open. She dropped it over her shoulders. Ares bounced his eyebrows and nodded encouragement. She tutted and slipped it back on. Ares' lower lip jutted out. She laughed on an upward spiral of the music. She kicked out her heel, jabbed his sternum, and cast the jacket away. Ares groaned as she pressed the stiletto hard into his flesh, the excitement pulsing into his bloodstream and jamming in the tip of his cock to the bass. She shot his swell a mocking look and kicked her leg back down. Her dusky, twilight skin glimmered through his white shirt. A hundred images of her naked body stampeded behind his eyes.

He whistled like a hooligan. 

Aphrodite threw her head back and cackled at him, her hair streaming. She whirled to him, dropped to crouch with her legs spread, and plunged her mouth over his cock. 

“Fuck, yeah!” Ares choked on his cry.

Her tongue swirled on his cock like a popsicle, her lips covering him in heat. She sucked and lapped for a few blissful moments, smiling tauntingly around his shaft, as he swelled and panted. He twisted in the bonds. His heart cantered. He roasted in the heat of craving her.

She shot up too quickly, standing and running her tongue over a droplet on her lips. He throbbed, groaned, and pouted. 

She slipped the uniform tie open, whipped it off, and looped it through the red-gold ring on his collar. She yanked him forward. Their mouths collided in a fierce, combative kiss. Ares rushed with joy, his breath fled. He returned her kiss with all his force, her mouth maddening and glorious. She sucked hard, as she pulled from him, drawing his blood to his lips, leaving him prickling. She slipped the tie from the collar ring and dropped it at her feet, like a withered vine. 

She strutted too far from him. A growl coursed out of him unbidden. “Gods, I fucking want you.”

Her eyes flashed. “Yeah?”

Ares had been so afraid of the monsters inside him, he’d kept the rest of his animalism penned in too. The side of him she puppeted without mercy. The side of him she rode like a tidal wave. The anxious, doubting, cruel crows and serpents were trampled under foot by the racing, ravenous wolves and lions that Aphrodite beckoned with the satin movements of her beautiful body and the delicious twist of her mouth. 

“Yeah.” His words came low and rough, rumbling in his chest and smouldering on his tongue. “Fuck, let me at you, First of the Goddesses. You fucking created divinity, now let me worship you like you deserve.”

Her breasts bobbed under the shirt and her cheeks and eyes darkened. He could taste her on the air. Gods, that taste.

"Well, OK." She smirked. "I'll take this shirt off slowly, though. Have to respect the uniform, don't we?"

Ares bit his lip and smirked back. That uniform was what he wore to see his father, to attend the princely Olympus gatherings and show everyone he was worth something, that he wasn't just the mistake kid that failed to save Zeus and Hera's marriage in its death throes. War was what made him exist to those people. He'd clung to it all his life. Peace-time unmade him. But not here. Not with her. Aphrodite loved the man, not the uniform. 

"Fuck the costume," he snarled.

Aphrodite beamed triumphantly. She tore the shirt open, buttons pinging around the room like buckshot. She daggered his chest with her heel, his heart banged against it. She pointed her toe, raising the top of her foot under his chin. He looked hotly into her eyes and stroked his lips along her foot. She spun it away. Her gaze glittered like midnight. The shirt hung over her curves, her cleavage making his mouth water, her nipples tenting the fabric, the graceful strokes of her collarbone and belly dipped in shadow. Her pussy peeped at him. He flickered his tongue and grinned. She shivered. It was gorgeous. Gods, he loved how she reacted to his hunger. She was beginning to look feral, behind the coy temptress veneer. 

She peeled the shirt open and let it slowly flow to the floor. Glinting over her nipples were two more medals, hanging from the red ribbons, which she’d secured with a little body glue. Ares erupted into wild laughter. He doubled over, gasping, then lurched back, to meet her dazzling eyes, as she cackled at him. She whipped forward, bending over him with her hands on her hips. He snatched a medal in his teeth and tugged it. She’d used very little glue. It slipped from her skin. He spat it to the floor. Fuck it. A trinket. Irrelevant. There was real pleasure to be had. He lapped her and grinned at her gasp. He darted to the other dangling medal and snatched and spat again. He flitted around her breasts, took her nipples into his mouth, sucked, licked, felt them harden to gemstones, and bit and rolled them in his teeth. She moaned and dug her fingernails into his shoulders. The sting sent pulses through his cock. He dined on her, not sure if the taste of her skin or the way she mewled and wove her hips was more hypnotic. He flicked his tongue hard over the points. She began to breathe so fast that it came in small squeaks. Her breasts bounced with it, her nipples pummelling his tongue and driving him wild. 

He grumbled low, bereft, when she straightened up, stilling herself with a hand to her chest, flushed violet. 

But now he could look at her, standing naked and tall and utterly over-powering.

Ares’ eyes widened. He moved desperately to touch her, the rope chewing his flesh. He writhed and fought for breath. She stood stripped and glowing, like a flourishing orchid. His eyes rushed around her, each element of her beauty as distracting as the next. Her shape, her stance, her brazenness, her gushing hair, her full, sugar-sparkle lips, her large, blackberry nipples, her spellbinding stare, the way her slightly-long canines protruded like a cat’s, the crocus-petal, heart-shaped birthmark on her hip, the lilac line beneath the cute knot of her belly button from Mania’s caesarian, the tilt of her chin, the crinkle above her nose, the shadows cupping her breasts. Every part of him ached for every part of her.

He gathered the bed sheets in his bound hands to steady himself. and tilted forward, raising his eyes to her, pleading and promising.

His lips parted, his request drifted into the air between them and draped itself around her exquisite body. “Let me be of service, Ma’am. I’ll do whatever you say.”

Aphrodite beamed brilliantly, then batted her eyes and looked at him teasingly under the brim of the cap. “I never thought of you as the kind of soldier boy to just blindly follow orders.” 

Ares smiled, a dreamy slope to his mouth. “It’s not blind if you have the right commander.”

Aphrodite felt like a firework fizzing into the sky. Ares’ eyes were the colour of blowing glass and the look in them warmed her throughout her body - devoted, devouring. The cut and strain of the interlace up his arms behind him carved into the details of his body, magnifying his incredible, bestial beauty until it was breath-taking. 

Her clit felt like a delicate glass jar trapping a frantic bee, humming and hammering against the walls. She’d endured taming his body, hearing him moan for pain, moving inside him as his muscles rolled against her, running her hands over his heat, nestling her pussy into his skilful tease, binding and collaring him and making him hers; she’d reached breaking point more times than she could count. Now - savagely excited, cooking in her own skin, her pulse galloping - his hunger stripped her control to a bare spindle. It surged off him, like steam from a cauldron, clinging to her skin, clogging her lungs. She closed the distance between them with a single step, feeling the tops of her thighs slide in her trickling slickness. She dragged her toe up his shin and over his thigh, slowly, watching how his blazing eyes followed it. She rested her foot near his hip, pressing the heel into his muscle. His chest expanded and his mouth twitched. She combed her fingers into his hair. His pupils supernovaed, swallowing his red irises.

“Ares…” Her murmur shook through both their bodies. “Give me your hunger.”

Ares moaned like a bear and dropped to press his mouth to her inner thigh, his eyes closing and his brow buckling. He parted his lips on her skin. His tongue stole over her, light and tormentingly slow. She shuddered violently. Ares glanced up at her wickedly. She pricked his scalp. He snickered against her. His lips began to wander leisurely up. The blood swarmed in her clit, she was almost stinging. She made a strained sound and pushed her legs wider. Ares snickered again. She grit her teeth and mewled. Gods, for such a sweetheart, he could be the most infuriating little player. His lips ghosted millimetres from her labia. His breath heated her pussy. He gave it a gentle, closed-mouth kiss.

_Gods, he’s too much._

“Fucking Fates, Boy!” she snapped. 

She clutched his hair, making him growl, and forced his mouth to her yearning clit. His growl turned into a lascivious moan that muffled and vibrated in her flesh. He instantly covered her clit with a lash of his tongue. Pleasure spiked through her body and she shrieked to the ceiling. 

“Yes, Ares!”

He moaned again, struck her again. His teasing vanished. He attacked her with his tongue, burrowing deep into her folds and snaking and coiling and flickering. His lips ground on her swollen labia, drawing more blood into her flesh, more heat, more sensitivity. His eyes were reverently closed, his hair a tangled mess under her fist as she drove him into her want. His blush became a dark, decadent wine-spill over his face, the muscles in his jaw ticking, as he worked his mouth harder against her. 

“Gods, Honey!”

Need bit her, pierced her like a hail of arrows. She pushed her heel down into his thigh. He growled, it rolled through her body. She clutched him tighter. He dropped his jaw to heave for breath, she didn’t slacken her grip, she made him breath her scent, pump scorching air over her pounding pussy. Wetness drizzled down his chin in droplets at their feet. He plunged in again. He sucked, flooding her with sensation. He unfurled his tongue and drew it back and forth in the rhythm of her rocking hips. She gazed down his back, his muscles shifting under the shadows of rope. He was twisting the sheets in his hands. She pushed into his mouth.

“Damn, Boy, your tongue is a fury,” she sighed.

He chuckled darkly and flickered light, rapid circles over the nut of nerve endings at her peak. She gasped and clenched on his hair, sticking her fingernails into her own thigh to hold herself together. He swept the butterfly tease away with long laps, swirling and sucking in cycles that drove her to madness. She could feel her racing heartbeat in every pore, she could barely stay standing. She clenched her pelvic floor and the pleasure washed her. Her core pulsed and ached, reverberating with his rumbles of satisfaction. The joints of her hips and knees burned, about to cave. She trembled. She let loose a jet of breathless, high-pitched moans.

“Yes, Ares, yes, oh, oh, Honey, oh like that, fuck, you’re amazing, you’re perfect, Gods, yes, yes…”

Ares whimpered and curled his tongue back and pressed a sincere kiss to her clit that shimmered across her body. 

She buckled.

She dropped heavily to sit astride his lap, the impact shocking tingles up her. He gruffed, as her heel scraped off his thigh and her weight hit him. They flew into a wild, longing kiss. Her senses clouded with her own spiced-flowers flavour, his mouth shining with it. Her drenched pussy iced. 

“Shit, I love it when you fuck my mouth,” Ares husked against her lips, “I feel drunk.”

“That felt so fucking good, Boy,” she panted, seizing his cock with one hand, and with the other hooking the ring on his collar and pulling him into a stream of boiling kisses, “You make me feel like nothing else, my love.” She worked his cock hard, feeling it turn to bronze in her grip. “Oh…” She kissed him. She pumped his cock. “Oh Gods…” She kissed him. She pumped his cock. “Gods, I need you. I need you right now.”

“Anything,” Ares panted in his throat, “Anything, Aph, Ma’am, anything…”

He dove to her neck and held her in his teeth and sucked, circling his tongue hard. It erupted in her arteries. She gasped and moaned. She grabbed his shoulders and pulled herself up his lap, coming to kneel on the bed astride his hips, the light catching the points of her heels. Her pussy enveloped his hard cock, pressing pleasure into her. They both hissed through their teeth. Ares raised his head, his eyes sparkling. He snared her mouth, their tongues locked. She ground against him, rubbing her peak of tenderness over the slick, hot, engorged head of his cock. He broke their kiss, cast his head back and cried out. She licked his neck, his salt sweat moreish. He groaned. He rocked with her, his tip pushing deeper. She felt like a coiled spring, quivering with the need for release.

“Fuck me…” she whispered.

“You kidding?” Ares grinned, eyes alight and wide, “You fuck me.”

Laughter coursed through her. She whipped off the cap and planted it on his head, slanted and rakish. Ares laughed too. His laugh was deep and unrestrained and joyous. It knocked her against his cock. She spasmed and her laughter turned into a squeal.

Ares yapped higher and darted forward, his biceps bulging in the rope, and bit her chin. “Get up here,” he chuckled, “Ride ‘em, Cowgirl.”

Aphrodite bubbled with happiness and churned with want. Here he was, in all his playful, ravenous, desirous splendour. Ares was here with her, at last. 

She levered herself up, working his cock, delighting in the etching of filled veins. She thumbed the tip, spreading his dew, smiling at how the rope forced his shiver between his flexed shoulder blades in a cord of shadow. She lowered herself onto him.

“FUCK!”

“YES!” 

They cried out in unison, connecting and coursing with lightning. Lust and pleasure caged them, taking control of their bodies. Ares contorted, his eyes dazed, his mouth slack, his torso creviced with tension. He gripped the sheets behind him so intensely, they looked like they might tear. He lurched backwards, she grasped him to steady herself, as she was almost bowled over by a wave of pleasure. She gazed at him, beautifully bound; sculpted and vulnerable and full of a bridled, primal, cosmic potential energy that made her feel like the day she rose from the sea in the midst of a Titanic uprising. The collar drew her eye, cloaking her with the wonderful knowledge that this gentle, generous, fierce, fun, unpredictable god was hers. His scarlet eyes glinted in the roguish shadow of the cap.

They tumbled into intoxicated kissing. 

They lunged into fast, chaotic thrusting, Aphrodite’s hair swishing and her flesh jostling, as she was cast up and down by Ares’ powerful movements. She swung back. He ducked with a growl and lavished his tongue over her breasts, sucking her nipples like candy. 

“Gods… Fuck… Just like that…” Aphrodite hissed through clenched teeth, bucking and grinding, pulling the pleasure from his cock into her yearning body with rolling beckons of her hips.

Ares sloshed his tongue over her, dirty and desperate, sucking her sore, grunting as he thrust deeper and harder. She ran her hands over the leather of the collar. She strummed the interlacing cord at his back. She clawed his shoulders. He glanced up at her from beneath the jaunty brim of the cap. He licked his teeth. She seized his face and kissed him. He nibbled on her lower lip. They sped up, bouncing and slapping. 

Firecracker pleasure whisked and popped across Aphrodite’s skin. She moaned hoarsely and whipped back from their kiss, her lip stinging. She leaned back, hanging from his shoulder with one hand. She stared at the flowing undulations of their bodies, perfectly in sync, forming a chalice of fire and shadow. Her clit screamed. She pressed her fingertips to it and circled, beginning to twist her hips in the motion to match her touch. Pleasure swept her up in a hurricane. She made a wild, lupine sound.

Ares moaned and glared desperately down at her hand. “Oh... Fuck, yes…” he snarled, “Touch yourself. Oh, that's so fucking hot.”

Aphrodite whined and pressed harder, writhing fiercely, ricocheting up and down, like a basketball.

Ares matched her, wrapping her in the red net of his glutton’s gaze. “You’re such a greedy fucking woman, Ma’am. Fuck, I love it. I can’t get enough of it. Take everything you want from my body. Ride me into nothingness.”

The filth in his tone crazed her. At last, he was talking again. Gods, he was talking... “Oh Gods, Ares, Ares…”

Ares stared at her brazenly from the shadow of the cap, demonic and delicious. “The way your mouth looks just before you come, just before you scream… Fates, Aph, it’s the most fucking beautiful thing in the world.”

Their weight punched into the mattress in rhythmic screeches.

“You close, Beautiful?” Ares whispered.

Aphrodite could barely speak. Her lips trembled around her answer. “I’m... So... C-close…”

“You know the drill, Ma’am, I don’t come ‘til you do. I’ll be hard as long as you need me. Just tear the pleasure outta me, you stunning succubus.”

Aphrodite bit her lip and flashed her eyes at him. “Yeah? You can hang on?” 

She rose and fell, driving him deep, twisting his nipple brutally as she sank. His spine arched and he roared through clenched teeth.

“OK…” he croaked, “Maybe not too long…”

She giggled gleefully. She lifted her hand from her clit, pinched his ear, and pulled him into a delirious kiss. She wrapped her arms around his neck. She crushed herself to him, and rode him harder, fires striking between their grinding bodies. Ares threw himself into her kiss, his arms straining furiously against the rope. She could feel his need whipping around her, his need to hold her, to fuck her, to drown them both in pleasure. Her body surged. She broke their kiss to squeal.

Ares bit her lower lip, then lashed the soreness with his hot tongue. He smiled with all his mischief. He dipped forward and whispered in her ear. “Scream the fucking house down, Soda Pop.”

“Fuck, Honey Bear…”

“Scream for me, Babe.”

“You feel so good.”

“You feel fucking incredible. I want you to come shaking on my cock, I want you falling apart in my lap.”

“I want you left in ruins.”

“Let’s cause an earthquake.”

He thrust deep.

He shattered her like an ice pick.

She was rent by pleasure. Her body turned to wildfire. She split apart with a jolt of almost pain. 

She screamed. 

She cried out loud enough to scatter the stars. 

Ares echoed her. His cock pulsed in her core, chasing more wonderful waves through her. Heat coursed into heat. Their cries braided in the air between them. Their shared release washed their bodies together, like bright dyes blending in water.

On the isle of Cyprus, waves ignored the receding tide and stormed the beach, engulfing the sands in a roaring swell. 

In the city of Sparta, the earth trembled and shook the walls of the fortresses.

“Oh, oh, Sunbeam… Fates…”

“Tartarus, Aph…”

They floated on the last of the high, staring in awe into each other’s eyes. Aphrodite smiled, plucked the cap from his head and tossed it away. He beamed, brighter than dawn. They fell to the bed in a jumble of limbs and gasps and laughter. Their bodies liquefied in the soft sheets, they moaned and slinked and fought for breath. They smiled at each other in a mist of sweat and balm and the malt tang of sex, hair tousled, skin mottled with heat and hickeys.

Aphrodite reached around Ares’ torso and plucked the ropes. They slipped loose. Ares’ arms flew forward. He gathered her up and clutched her close, burying his face in her neck. His chest rushed against her in a sigh of relief. She enclosed him in her embrace, falling gratefully into his warmth. She ran her hands over the network of rope-marks, flushed amber on his marigold skin. She plucked the buckle of the collar.

Ares mumbled unintelligibly into the hollow beneath her jaw.

“What’s that, Handsome?”

“Leave it on.”

He kissed her neck softly. Her heart swelled. She stroked her thumb over the collar, than his cheek. She curled around him and pressed her lips to his hair.

They breathed together, for a long moment.

“I love you so much, my Ares,” she whispered.

His body billowed in her arms as he sighed again. He shuffled a little closer against her, his warm hands splayed over her back.

“I love you so much, my Aphrodite.”

They drifted into a dazed, comfortable hush. 

Ares scooped Aphrodite closer, making a badger’s set in her warmth and feeling himself slipping into hibernation. His body hummed lazily, he breathed in slowly, catching her most intimate scent still lacing his mouth. He let out a small, satisfied, helpless groan. He smiled, as she wrapped him tighter, her thigh weighing down his flank. 

He lay in the quiet like a crashed meteor, his mind and body deeply, sweetly, finally silent.


	13. As You Lend Your Strength

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The following day. Ares finds his place again.
> 
> No sads, only fluff! 
> 
> Hope you guys liked that thing in The Lord of the Rings, where it had like 50 end scenes, because that’s what we’re doing here!

Eros lay in his bed, staring up at the slivers of morning sunlight glancing across the pastel ceiling of his room. He had to get up. He had to make breakfast. Pragma had ballet this afternoon, and Agape had soccer. They were nearly out of milk and jam and easy-peel oranges. The lounge hadn’t been cleaned up since Ludus made slime yesterday. The laurel bush needed pruning. Eros made lists and schedules obsessively in his mind, hoping that at some point something would slot into place that made it worth getting out of bed. Something would feel normal and important enough to make it so last night hadn’t happened. 

He hadn’t heard his parents come home. Fates knew where they were now, whether they were together, whether they ever would be again. Momma had seemed so confident when she left. If she hadn’t found Dad, he couldn’t bear to see the state she’d be in. 

But did he even want him found? 

_ Yes. _

_ Gods, yes. _

_ I just want him back. _

Eros sighed. It heaved out of his lungs and sloped from his mouth, turning into a miserable, cold sludge in the air. 

_ Breakfast. _

_ Brave face. _

_ One thing at a time. _

The spit of oil and the delicious scent of pancake batter danced up the stairs to him, as he trudged in his navy pyjamas towards the kitchen. It should have been a comforting smell, but it jabbed him with guilt.

_ Damn it, Agape must be making breakfast. You don’t have to do that, Green Bean. _

He could hear voices. Several voices. 

_ Am I the last up? Shit. _

He had hoped for a solitary coffee before facing the barrage of questions and worries and short tempers that were bound to follow last night. He pressed his lips together and rubbed his tight stomach. Gingerly, he reached out with his powers.

Calm. 

Calm nudged his senses, coloured lavender and tinted with a cheerful, refreshing marigold. 

_ Huh? _

Eros crept to the hallway door and peeked into the kitchen. Philia sat primly at the kitchen table, looking into a pink, plastic-framed, hand-held mirror, as Pragma stood behind her, preening her wings with a soft-bristled brush, adopting the haughty, hipster look of a royal stylist. Agape was settling Mania into her high chair, chuntering at the little cherry tomato, as Mania gurgled dismissively at whatever Agape was trying to persuade her to do. The door to the lounge was open and the grating theme tune of Medusa’s Gorgon-ganza blared from it, Ludus and Philautia honking along to the jingle. 

Over at the cooker, his broad, strong back to Eros, arm circling softly, as he swilled popping batter around a frying pan…

_ Dad? _

And Storge was beside him, perched like a robin on the counter top, twisting the hem of his turquoise pyjamas in his delicate hands, his little feet kicking slightly.

Eros leaned forward warily. His fingers curled around the door frame, and clenched. 

“We’re not allowed to sit up here,” Storge said in a small voice, glancing nervously at Dad, his body a little crooked from shrinking away from the large, ruddy form of the War God.

“Yeah.” Ares’ voice came low, leisurely, brightened a little by the mockery Eros once called familiar. “I’m a wild card like that.”

Dad’s huge paw reached out and tickled Storge’s belly. Storge giggled and hiccupped, wriggling like a startled squirrel. Then he drooped, bunching his narrow shoulders up and chewing his lip. “Poppa, ummm…” He scratched his nose. He seemed to steel himself. His voice dropped very quiet. 

Eros strained to hear over the screech of the Perseus puppet gambolling about in terror from the lounge. 

“I'm sorry for being a scaredy cat. I know it bugs you.”

Eros clamped the door frame. His hackles rose. He slid one bare foot forward to march in. But Dad’s motion stopped him. It was subtle, but it was definite. He slid the frying pan off the heat and turned his body to Storge. For the first time, his eyes came into view. They were a mellow, split-peach colour. 

Dad put his hand over Storge’s restless grip on his pyjamas, quelling it. He spoke with a gentleness that echoed in Eros’ rib cage, made his heart weep and glimmer. “Hey, Buddy, no. You know why we call you Marshmallow?”

Storge thought very hard for a moment. “Because I'm pink?”

Dad chuckled. Gods, Eros had missed that rumbling, easy melody. He saw Dad’s fingers curl, squeezing Storge’s hands tenderly. 

“Nah. Because you're soft. And that's what makes you perfect.” He looked with deep sincerity into Storge’s wide, trusting eyes. 

Eros gazed at his father’s face. The harsh, jagged tension of his jaw had smoothed. He looked tired, but no longer drawn and harried. His mouth pulled up at the corner, an echo of his characteristic, boyish smile. The bloody stain around his eyes had calmed like a healing wound, a fruit-juice spill along the line of his cheekbones. Eros watched him hold Storge’s gaze carefully, waiting to be sure his meaning had sunk in, that the little one wasn’t upset or afraid. Storge purposefully pondered Dad’s words, then looked up into his face and smiled. 

Dad smiled back. He squeezed Storge’s hands again, then took his hand away and rubbed the back of his neck. Eros mimicked the gesture.

Dad cleared his throat and looked down at a smudge of flour by Storge’s leg. “It's a little hard to explain,” he said, “You'll get it when you're older. But sometimes grown-ups act like people are bugging them, when actually they're bugging themselves.

Storge considered again. Dad raised his gaze with a penitent look that ached in Eros’ gut.

_ Oh, Dad… _

Sympathetic tears pressed behind Eros’ eyes. He blinked hard. Was this real? Was he back? 

Storge nodded solemnly. Dad’s mouth and brow twitched. He turned back to the cooker and slid the pan back onto the heat. A fresh wave of sizzling and the sweet batter smell washed over Eros. For the first time in too long, he felt genuinely excited to eat.

“How do you make it stay all round when it’s all runny?” Storge perked up, the question lightening his voice.

Dad grinned. Eros could see it, even with his back turned. “I’m a god, Squirt, I can do anything.”

Storge’s eyes turned to saucers. “Anything! Wow! I hope I'm a god when I grow up.”

The easy encouragement in Dad’s tone was even more drawing than the pancake smell. He bumped Storge gently with his elbow, as he lazily flipped a golden disc and it slapped back into the oil. “You’re gonna be an awesome god when you grow up.”

Storge splayed his fingers, inspecting them for signs of power. “What will I be a god of?”

“We’ll have to see. Something really cool, though.”

“Like you?”

Dad’s back tensed. The batter hissed and smacked. He rolled his shoulders and the rigidity flowed out of his muscles. He levered a spatula under the pancake and slipped it onto a waiting stack. He picked up a jug and poured another blob into the pan. “Maybe bits of what I do,” he answered hesitantly, “But you’ve got your own super powers, Marshmallow.”

Storge beamed like a raspberry in afternoon sunshine. So did Eros. 

“Hey.” Dad shuffled the batter in the pan and glanced to Storge with a raised eyebrow, Eros just glimpsing it as his profile emerged again. “Later, would you draw me a picture of Momma?”

Eros pressed his hand to his expanding heart.

Storge nodded vigorously, his fingers flying to a sparkling flush in his cheek. “Momma looking pretty!” he piped.

“Damn straight!” Dad gave Storge a hearty wink. “Your old man does alright.” He cuffed Storge’s knee with his knuckles, and flipped another disc.

Eros felt the knots in his body unravel. He tried to tell himself not to assume too much. He hadn’t seen Momma yet, he had no idea how Dad was actually doing, and was he really going to let him off the hook for a stack of pancakes? Damn, those pancakes smelled good, though. Was that cinnamon in the mix? 

_ Here goes nothing. _

Eros took a steadying breath and walked purposefully into the kitchen. He rubbed Agape’s arm as he passed, now settled on her phone beside a strapped in, babbling Mania. She tapped his wrist with her knuckle. He fished a bottle of orange juice from the fridge, and a grapefruit from a bowl at the side. He poured the juice into a tall glass. He sliced the grapefruit in half on a chopping board already streaked and littered with the remains of berries. He snicked out a neat wedge, deftly slit its centre, and fitted it onto the rim of the glass. He could feel Dad’s eyes on him, like leaning near a candle flame. He swallowed. He focused on the bitter tang of the grapefruit. 

He turned resolutely and met his father’s eyes.

Dad had paused, mid-flip, a new half-cooked pancake drooping at the edge of the pan. He watched Eros like a rabbit watches a fox. Storge’s curious face peeked around the messy cloud of Dad’s custard, cotton hair. The sight of Dad’s face so open, so soft, it was like the shimmer of sunken treasure at the bottom of the sea. Eros opened his mouth to say something. His chest felt full. His heart felt full. He swallowed again. He held out the glass.

There was a long, weighty pause.

Dad glanced at the glass. Then back into Eros’ face.

Eros stretched his arm out further.

Dad’s hand raised, pulled back, slowly moved forward. 

He took the glass.

He held Eros’ eye. Not defiantly, not confrontationally. Warily. Hopefully.

He broke his gaze and swigged.

He chugged half the glass in one gulp. He set it down with a soft thunk. “Good job, Cap,” he said quietly. 

He looked back into Eros’ face. Eros felt the words much heavier than they seemed. Dad wasn’t talking about the juice. Eros’ chest brimmed with emotion. Dad’s hand had rested on the edge of the counter, his fingers crooked, but poking towards Eros, as if contemplating moving closer. Eros didn’t think twice. He laid his hand firmly over his father’s. 

Dad sank into his reassurance. Eros saw his eyes drop closed briefly and felt a tightly held breath whoosh out of him. Dad looked back into his face, with a tiny, hesitant, supplicant smile. Eros burst with relief. Tears surged into his eyes, pain and longing and terror all disintegrating in his body. He swallowed them determinedly back, as he saw Dad’s eyes shine a little brighter. Eros dropped his brow onto Dad’s shoulder, hiding his face, letting Dad take his weight. Dad shifted under him to form a better rest. A moment passed quietly, Eros surrendering himself to the warmth that radiated off his father, his beacon of hope. He felt Dad lay a kiss in his hair and nestle his face in the rosy tousle. 

Another long moment, the two of them drifting down a river and waiting for the current to settle. 

_ He's here with us. With me. Thank Gods. _

Eros felt like he'd been falling for days and someone had finally caught him. He was held, he was protected. An immense weight left his body. No more brave face. No more being everyone's backbone. He could lean on someone now. The person he'd always leaned on, the person he could always retreat to. Momma was a miracle; she was his guide, his idol, his comfort. But she bore so much, burdening her further always ached. Here, supported by his father's strong, sturdy shoulder, by this resolute, reliable pillar, by this fortress, that accepted him, in all his struggles and his mistakes, without question, without so much as batting an eye, always easy, always solid, Eros finally let himself go. 

_ Breathe. I can breathe.  _

Eros sniffed sharply and took a deep, fortifying breath, grapefruit and sugar and cinnamon and Dad’s tacky shower gel rushing into his senses. He stood straight again, gave himself a small shake, and flashed a brash grin. “You’ll fatten up the troops.”

Dad barked a laugh and snatched up the handle of the frying pan to a chorus of spitting. “This, Baby Bear, is the breakfast of champions. Go get the rabble, we’re almost ready.” He jerked his head towards the living room. 

Eros gave him a mock, two-fingered salute. He lifted Storge from the counter, with a peck to his forehead, and rounded up his siblings. There was a lot of excited gabble, as they scraped their chairs into place.

Ludus banged his knife and fork on the table. “Food! Food! Food! Food!”

“Alright, you imp!” Dad called over his shoulder, “Gimme a minute!”

“Poppa, do a big flip!” Pragma demanded.

“Sure thing, Princess!” 

Dad spun on his heel, held the pan out like a magician flourishing his top hat, and cast the pancake into the air. It somersaulted and smacked and slopped back into the pan. The kids all hooted. 

Agape glanced up aloofly over her phone. “Weak, Dad. Have you not seen the trick shot trend on Nymphsta?”

“Corn Chip,” Dad replied with mock exasperation, “I’ve spent the last six months in a place where they don’t have lightbulbs. No, I have not seen the latest Nymphsta trend.”

He started divvying pancakes out onto plates. Ludus snatched up the maple syrup, already on the table, and popped the top, releasing its rich scent into the already sweet air. 

“Well,” Agape drawled, “Don’t look. It’ll be embarrassing for you.”

“Ah, to be the age when SM stands for Social Media,” Dad said under his breath. 

_ Aaaand we're back to normal _ .

Eros cleared his throat pointedly.

“What?” Agape frowned quizzically.

“What?” Dad echoed innocently.

“What?” A new voice floated into the kitchen, lilting and merry. “All these children, sitting at the table, patiently waiting for food? Impossible. I must be in the wrong house.”

“Momma!” Philia squeaked, “Look at my wings!”

“I did them!” Pragma declared.

“Beautiful, girls,” Momma said sweetly.

She swept into the room in her graceful gush of cherry satin, her dressing gown slack around her shoulders and her hair clipped loosely on top of her head, giving her a relaxed look Eros hadn’t seen in months. He noticed Dad perk up like a hound on seeing her. She caught Dad’s eye. Eros was struck behind his sternum with the bolt of electricity between them. He leaned his hand over his mouth and smiled. 

_ They’re… They’re OK. They’re better than OK. _

Momma stepped lightly around the table, tucking napkins into shirt-fronts, stroking hair, kissing cheeks, taking the syrup bottle off Ludus and putting it out of his reach across the table. She went to Dad and tucked herself to his side, her hand spreading over his back and stroking up and down. Dad was in a tank top and Eros could see his muscles responding loyally to Momma’s touch.

“Those are yours,” he husked, nodding to a plate set aside, with a tea towel over it. 

Momma kept her hand on his back, as she reached out and peeled back the cloth. It was a stack of pancakes, still steaming, perfectly round and aligned, clearly made with the utmost care, bejewelled with gleaming red.

She beamed up at Dad, her eyes sparkling so vividly they seemed to dim the lights. “You put strawberries in them.”

The smile Dad gave her would have fit better on a high-schooler asking the prettiest girl in class to prom. He gruffed in his chest. “Brain like a sieve, but I know my lady’s favourites.”

Momma’s voice lowered and sugared. “You sure do, Honey Bear.” Her hand stole down his spine and cupped his ass through his sweatpants. Eros looked away awkwardly, but the cloud of hot pink emotion around his parents instantly fogged the air. He tried to focus on Philautia belching the alphabet, without knowing what order any of the letters go in. But Momma’s voice prowled through the fog. “I am in luck. A tasty treat this morning and last night." She pinched Dad’s ass. Eros was hit with a spike of something, as Dad winced and growled and chuckled. 

Eros coughed loudly.

Dad and Momma glanced at him, and exchanged a mischievous look. Dad ducked his head. She bobbed onto her toes and kissed him. Eros was washed with their surge of closeness, sweet and spicy and so thick in the air, he could almost feel it stuck between his teeth. He pressed his fingertips to his temple and shot them a rueful look.

_ Come on, guys, it’s too early in the morning for blocking out my horny freak parents. _

Dad bore down on Momma, pushing their kiss more passionately. Momma hugged his middle and painted herself to him. They pulsed with joy and comfort. They flooded the room with love.

_ OK, fine, I missed this like Tartarus. I obviously hate it. But I really missed you dumb-dumbs. _

“WHOAH!” Ludus’ furious shout broke the atmosphere. “Momma gets strawberries!”

Dad only half moved out of the kiss, mumbling his reply against Momma’s lips. “Yep.”

“Why don't I?” Ludus demanded incredulously.

Dad turned to him with a sardonic smile. “Because Momma is my favourite.”

Ludus looked offended at his core. “Why?”

Dad grinned like a wicked wolf and opened his mouth to reply. Eros leaned frantically in his seat and shot his hands over Ludus’ ears. “Please don’t answer that!”

“I bet it's because she has the best hair.” Pragma said sagely.

“That’s probably it!” Eros squawked, then faltered, “Wait, hey, I clearly have the best hair.”

Pragma wrinkled her nose at him. She reached up and boinged the curl of his quiff. Eros bristled and batted her away. “Don’t! You varmint!”

A plate of pancakes clinked down in front of him. Dad’s hand thumped onto his head and rumpled his hair roughly.

“DAD!” 

Eros glared up at his smirking father, mirth splashing around the devilish, ruby blush. Eros jutted his chin out and swatted up to grab at Dad’s fringe. Dad swiped at his hands.

“Fight! Fight! Fight!” Ludus started banging his cutlery again.

Eros and Dad fell into a tussle, Eros buffeting between annoyance and laughter, as he fended off Dad’s bulldozer strength, pushing fiercely at his tree-bough arm, as Dad levelled the open syrup bottle over him and snapped his teeth and made ridiculous, boorish noises.

“Fight! Fight! Fight!”

"DAD! DECORUM!" 

"I'll decorum ya, ya little tyke!" 

The little ones chanted, Storge giggled into his hands, Mania shrieked, Agape snorted and snapped a photo, the table rattled, hands clapped, feet stomped. The raucous hullabaloo of the household of Aphrodite and Ares exploded to life and avalanched out into the morning.

Eros’ arms began to cave, leaving him inches away from having syrup up his nose. Then, suddenly, he was freed, as Momma swooped in, scooped Dad around the middle, and whirled him away from their son, the syrup bottle skittering across the table. She pulled him, laughing like lark song, into a deep, adoring kiss.

The kids erupted in revulsion.

“EEEEEEW!”

“Ugh, gross.”

“YUCK! WHY!”

“Stooooooop!”

Eros laughed like a gibbon. The joy and relief flowing through him pattered against the same soaring emotions shooting off his parents and tumbling over him, like blossom hit by cool spring rain. 

Dad came unstuck from Momma with an exaggerated slurping, smacking sound and cuddled her to him, glaring past her glowing cheek at the displeased crowd, with a goading grin. “Oh, if you didn't like that, you’ll HATE this.” 

_ Uhoh…  _

He hoisted her against him, nipped her lip, then swung her round and dipped her in a dramatic gesture. The clip pinged from her hair and her long tresses swooshed around them and down to the floor. She squealed and cackled and threw herself into the flight, raising her leg up to his hip and gripping him fiercely, as they kissed with a passion that slammed into Eros, like a runaway train. 

The kids booed furiously.

They only kissed harder, twined closer, dipped deeper.

Eros’ phone buzzed in his pocket, startling him from the flurry of chaotic, desiring glee drowning his senses. He fumbled for it and blinked at the screen.

_ Agape: This is worse lol _

He broke into a wide grin and looked up to meet her eye, smiling knowingly at him over her phone. He sent her a ream of laughing and heart emojis. He clicked his screen off. His own face glimmered back at him in the polished surface. Ruby eyes, square jaw, tousled curls. He rubbed the back of his neck and watched the gesture in his reflection.

_ There goes Ares’ boy. _

He smiled.

*

Eros stood in the hush of the outdoors. The small archery lawn was nestled between the overflowing garden and the tangled orchard, now smeared copper-gold by the first flush of autumn. The final sigh of sweet roses and the tingle of herbs, fresh cut grass, and crisp leaves blew the heady overload of Eros’ love-god-senses out of his system. He pointed his toe forward, he let his knees go springy, he rolled his spine and tugged it straight. He drew his bow. The creak of yew and cord hummed in his fingertips. He felt his muscles wake up, rise, harden. He took a deep, slow breath, filling his body with the gardens, directing all his crowded consciousness down the arrow.

He released.

The arrow pelted in a straight zip and thunked into the target, on the outer rim of the second ring from the centre.

He went loose again and ticked his jaw.

“You’re really good.”

He looked around. Dad was ambling up to him from the garden, a spray of yellow roses framing his hulking left shoulder. He came to halt about two feet from Eros, his hands in his sweatpants pockets, his expression back to soft and wary. He looked worn out from the high energy of breakfast.

Eros went a touch tense, but pushed through it. “Been practicing a bunch,” he said.

“You’re a hard worker.” Dad’s shoulders gathered up an inch.

Eros shrugged.

“You are.” Dad prodded a pebble with his toe, looking down. “Too much for your age.”

Eros put his hand on his hip and grinned out of one side of his mouth. “Well, the people around me are hard work.”

Dad raised an eyebrow. He clucked his tongue. “I deserved that.”

Eros’ smile flickered.

Dad slipped his hand from his pocket and rubbed his elbow, folding back a little, like a sail as the wind drops. His words came stiffly, solemnly, but he held Eros’ gaze. “Kiddo, listen, the worst thing about growing up is finding out your parents aren’t perfect.”

Dad's face was serious, grave almost. It struck Eros, stilled him. 

_ Fates, Dad, we've got plenty to work on. Can't today just be for rest?  _

Eros waved dismissively. “Wrong, it’s surprise body hair.”

Dad laughed. The sound boomed around the lawn, ruffling the grass and Eros' hair. He cuffed the air. “I’m trying to say serious stuff!” 

Eros laughed along softly. He put his bow in front of him and picked at the leather grip. “I don't need you to.”

Dad sobered. “What do you need?”

_ Gods, when was the last time somebody asked me that?  _

Eros huffed out through his nose. He poked his tongue into his cheek. He thought for a moment, twisting the bow a little tighter in his hands. Swallows were whistling, gathering on the telephone line over the garden fence. The simple, happy ease of the morning dwindled. The questions that had clawed at Eros since Dad left months ago weaseled out of the warrens in his mind. He tried to push them back. He glanced at Dad. 

_ He really wants to know. He wants to listen.  _

_ Breathe.  _

_ I can let him in.  _

“Are you sorry?” Eros asked eventually, looking at the grass between them.

“Yes,” Dad stated stoically, “I’m so sorry.”

Eros’ second question caught in his throat, it croaked and wisped.

_ Let him in. _

He kept his eyes down. “Do you love us?”

Silence. 

Encapsulating silence. 

Dad’s shadow grew over the grass, as he unfolded his arms and took a step towards Eros. One large, warm hand covered Eros’ shoulder. Eros felt strength trickling down his arm from the touch. He looked up. Dad’s eyes were stern and full. 

“More than anything,” he said levelly.

Eros stared into the twin hearth-fires of his father’s eyes. He let the words clasp him and soak in. He opened his heart gently, and felt the truth of them flow into him. Tears threatened again. He cleared his throat. “Then we’re good.”

Dad’s eyes shone like soap bubbles. He squeezed Eros’ shoulder. “You’re a pretty awesome kid, you know that?”

Eros unclenched and buoyed. “Yeah!” He shrugged Dad off, rocked back on his heel, and twirled his bow like a baton. “I’m Momma’s.”

Dad laughed.

“OK, I guess you pitched in some stuff.” Eros swung the bow up, rolling his eyes.

Dad snorted and ruffled his just-styled hair. “You got my pretty-boy curls, so you’re welcome for your luck in the pick up scene.”

Eros grumbled, batted him away, and prodded him with the bow.

Dad barked a laugh and swatted at him. “Show me what you got.”

_ Yeah!  _

Eros grinned. He tossed his quiff and restored his elegant stance. He plucked an arrow from the quiver stuck into the grass. He drew the bow, paying vigilant attention to every shift in his body and the breeze, now that his father was watching. He held the bow tight, clinging to it to cling to the moment. Dad took a few steps back and put his hands back in his pockets. Eros licked a gust of peppermint on the air. He fired. The arrow zoomed just shy of the bullseye.

“Hey!” Dad broke into a roar of triumph and clapped his hands, the sound banging off the trees in the orchard. “That’s great!”

Eros prickled, a little disappointed. He lowered the bow and shrugged. “I can never get it dead centre these days.”

“Sure you can.” Dad moved back in. “Here let me show you something.” 

He set about arranging Eros’ stance, pulling a crook out of his shoulders, nudging his chin a smidgeon up, wriggling his fingers like daffodils in the breeze, to show him how to ease his grip. Eros paid close attention. When Dad was finished, Eros could feel the difference in his body. He felt tighter, as if any slack had been knotted securely, pulling him into shape. He levelled his gaze along the arrow. He could feel his teacher at his back. 

The swallows silenced. 

He fired.

Bullseye.

Dad cupped his mouth and crowed like a cockerel. Eros gaped at the target, then thrust the bow into the air and whooped.

“That’s my boy!” Dad clapped him between the shoulder blades. “Shot to the heart!”

*

The library was cool. The first frostiness of autumn had quelled the summer heat and the pages of the restless books were quieter than usual, stirring lethargically as Aphrodite passed. Ares’ heart book was closed carefully in her hands. She could feel the pages shifting under her touch, moving softly and rhythmically in time with her pulse. She wound through the maze of shelves. When she reached the cabinet in the centre, her stomach fluttered. The glimmer from honey gold ichor leaked over her skin. She looked down at the crimson cover of Ares’ manuscript. She had resisted looking all day, wondered if she even should. She could feel the change in him, in herself. It was the start of a long road, but at least it was the right road.

But, maybe, just to be sure…

She tentatively ran her fingertip down the uneven pages. She slipped her fingernail between them. The book sighed. Her guts knotted. She slowly, so slowly, lifted her finger and folded it open. 

Ares' gilded scrawl glistened in the low light. Over it, she could still see the warped, violent graffiti across the text. She grit her teeth. She calmed herself. The grotesque images were faint and fading. The thick black lines had paled to a tea-stain brown, the jagged edges had blurred. Ares’ bold, messy, impulsive writing blazed through them and cast them even fainter. She allowed herself a small smile. He was healing. It was imperfect. That didn’t matter. So was love. 

She turned to the latest entry. A blank, smooth piece of parchment bore a simple inscription in the middle of the page.

_ Today, I woke up at home. _

Her heart swelled. Her body relaxed.

She shut the book.

She unlocked the cabinet with a quiet click. 

She slotted the book back into place. Her fingertip trailed down the spine affectionately, as she drew her hand away. 

_ “I want to be close to you.” _

She wasn’t sure if she felt or heard his voice. Or maybe it was her own. He was only outside, but even that was darling torture, now they were so intensely connected again. Last night had been humming in her body since she woke, somehow louder and more melodic as the day rolled further from it. The need to be beside him whispered in her blood, in her skin. 

She locked the cabinet with a resolute turn of the small, golden key. She held the key in her palm and looked down at it for a long while. It winked up at her. 

“No more,” she vowed under her breath.

She stowed the key at the bottom of a drawer in a nearby desk.

_ I want to be close to you. _

She took a single, steadying breath of the paper and ink and wax and honey. 

She turned and walked out of the library.

She did not look back.

*

Aphrodite found Ares with Eros on the archery lawn. The target’s yellow bullseye had three slender, pink-feathered arrows sprouting from it. Eros and Ares were laughing and fumbling their way through an ancient secret handshake.

“You remember this? You remember how it goes?” Eros asked mockingly, slapping the back of his hand to Ares’.

Ares took the momentum and sent a wave through his hand, up his arm and down the other. “Obviously, what do you take me for?”

Fist bump. “When’s my birthday?” 

Pinky link. “Shut up.” 

Up high. “See?” 

Down low. “When you have this many spawn, Kiddo, you take to just assuming any given day is someone’s birthday.” 

They spun. “I don’t appreciate being called ‘spawn’.”

They thumped their chests. “Offspring then.”

“That’s somehow worse, I'll stick with spawn.”

Aphrodite watched the unbelievably long handshake for as long as she could without cracking up, but the hip bump got her and her giggle interrupted them. They turned, faces brightening and flooding her with comfort. They were so beautiful, so similar. The tilts of their mouths, the shapes of their shoulders, the defiant way their chins stuck out, and the shadows of their curls in their ruby eyes. She beamed. She brimmed with it. She wandered over to them. Ares’ arm floated instinctively out. She slotted to his body, like a peg into a puzzle. She traced her fingers over the satisfying mounds of muscle in his back. She teased where she knew the faint scratches from the flogger still inscribed is skin. She felt him wriggle a little beside her, trying to keep still in front of Eros, whose eyes narrowed suspiciously. Damn that power of his, it was growing so fast.

“How are my boys?” Aphrodite asked pleasantly.

“On target.” Eros grinned, jabbing his thumb over his shoulder at the skewered bullseye.

“So I see.” Aphrodite reached out and rubbed his archer’s arm, the usual amazement at her son's evolving strength nudging her heart. Her hand drifted back and landed on Ares’ abs. She could feel the smooth ridges through soft cotton. She drummed her fingers on them. His sweet, peppery desire seeped into her senses. She could feel his eyes on her, smouldering. 

“Do you mind if I steal him away?” she asked innocently.

Eros’ nose wrinkled and his lips pursed. “Ack, please do.”

She giggled, blew her Baby Bear a kiss, and steered Ares over the lawn to the orchard.

He fell effortlessly into step with her. His body had an easy, rolling sway, as she led him into the fruit trees. The apple crop was on the threshold between ripe and rotting. It infused the air with sharp, mouth-watering sweetness. Ares took a deep breath, his head dropping back so the sun through the leaves dappled his face. His torso expanded into hers. Her flesh hummed with the press of his heat. All day, her mind had been a carousel of images of last night. Her eyes had wandered constantly to his body, to the tracks of her punishment in his skin, to the hickey just peeking from the strap of his tank top, to the tenderised meat of his muscles, to the lingering sparkle in his eyes. She felt as if her spirit had left her body to haunt his. 

He peeled away from her, leaving her tingling, and reached up into the branches, tugging his top up over a sliver of golden skin, drawing his body into a long, harmonious stroke. His fingers tangled with a bunch of glowing, garnet apples. He tugged one, a rustle rippling through the leaves. It rolled into his palm. He squeezed it gently, then tossed it hand to hand, the hard fruit tick-tocking in a metronome rhythm.

“We should pick these before they turn,” he said.

Aphrodite closed her hands around his, stilling the apple. She caught his eye and held it with a twinkle. She ducked down and took a deep bite. Apple burst in her senses. She bobbed back up, her tongue moving, her lips glistening, her hands still light over his.

_ Well, if he's going to be such a damn temptation… _

Ares’ gaze turned amber, watching her mouth. It filled her with pleasure. His teeth emerged from his slight smile. He dropped back heavily against the tree, sending another rustle through it. He took a bite from the apple, his tongue flicking the edge of the wound made under her lips. She heated. She stepped to him and drummed her fingertips on his broad shoulder. 

She applied the lightest point of pressure. 

He sank. 

He lowered to his knees, still looking warmly up at her, still holding the apple, laced with juice. She cocked her leg and leaned her knee against the trunk, caging him between her legs. Her skirt was short. She saw his eyes slick up her thigh and under the hem. The hairs rose on the back of her neck. 

_ Fates, that stare feels good. I'd burn my wardrobe, if I could wear that stare every day.  _

Ares smiled, nuzzled under the hem of her skirt, and pressed a kiss to her gusset. Soft pleasure rippled over her body. She teased the nape of his neck. His tongue dragged along lace, heating and pressing her clit. She mewled and dropped her head back. The white-gold sun sprinkled through the interlace of leaves, kissing her face and the rise of her breasts. Ares pressed the torn part of the apple to the high inside of her thigh. It prickled cool against her skin. He sucked the juice trickling down her, drawing her blood to the surface, clipping her with his teeth. She shivered. 

_ Gods, that's heaven.  _

“Sunbeam…” she sighed.

“Uhuh?” His dazed voice thrummed against her pulse, his lips brushing her.

“I didn’t steal you away for this...” The “this” hissed into the air, as he lapped her panties again.

“Huh.” He tugged her gusset down with his teeth and mumbled around the fabric. “Surprise, then.”

He pinged her panties back and ground his lips against her clit. Aphrodite gasped and her knees nearly buckled, dropping her weight into his mouth. She felt him smile against her. She had wanted him alone for something important… She was sure of it… Right? 

He leaned back, glanced at her with sleepy mischief, took a bite from the apple. A thread of juice trickled down his strong chin. She caught it with her finger, then caressed his throat. 

“I wanted to talk to you,” Aphrodite murmured, with no resolve.

Ares grinned. “I’m not stopping you.” 

His look made her burn. She thought about him collared, bound, cuffed, marked, hungry, unravelling, surrendering. She thought about being enclosed in his body, about him rocking beneath her. She thought about the sounds he made when his pleasure spiked. She thought about how close his tongue now was to her flesh, about the prickle of apple juice. She thought about him coming back to life under her whip, under her touch.

She whimpered and dropped forward, supporting herself with one hand, leaning on the trunk over his head. She slipped her other hand from his neck and tugged the gusset of her panties wide. Ares growled under his breath. Her eyes closed. She heard the crunch of him biting into the apple again. His tongue snaked into her folds and sharp tingling erupted over her pussy. She gasped. She sighed. He pressed his lips to her labia and circled his tongue, soft and slow, stirring her clit, pleasure spiralling through her body. 

“Oh… Ares…”

He drew away. He crushed his thumb into the apple’s flesh. He teased the wet pad around the inside of her thigh. He sucked her skin clean. He moaned low and drifted back into her pussy. 

The pleasure surged with the slow, indulgent journeying of his tongue. Her eyes fluttered open and spotted him palming himself through his pants. His eyes were closed, his mouth moved like he was eating melted chocolate. She slinked and dragged her clit over his tongue. He moaned and lapped, making her tremble.

Their reunion had reset her body. She felt tousled, unstuck, like a heap of unwrapped ribbon. Her pleasure tumbled like falling fruit in the breeze, coming loose easily in his deep, wet, silken swirl. Tremors skipped through her. He caught them with his tongue and flung them back up her body with a springy flick. His cheek stroked against the inside of her thigh. She could feel his jaw revolving, as he caressed her with the full length of his tongue. That caress was everything. Pleasure stirred into something sweeter and deeper, as his care, his commitment, flowed into her senses. In his quiet, soft giving, she fully remembered how much he loved her pleasure, loved her appetite, loved her joy. Her powers stirred like summer rain clouds under her skin. 

She moaned and pressed her palm to the rough bark of the tree. She quivered and the leaves chorused. 

Ares pulled back, winked up at her, bit into the apple, dove back in, shooting frosty pricking sensations through her tender flesh. It whisked her pleasure high. Her breath caught. The patchwork sunlight dazzled her. 

His tongue burrowed into the peak of her pleasure and flickered hard. 

She cascaded. 

With a high gasp and a stream of relaxed, dizzy mewls, her pleasure shot to its zenith and rushed through her. Her charged power crackled at her fingertips. Her legs gave out. She sank into his lap, an aftershock lancing her, as her seat landed on his thick mound. He groaned and writhed under the pressure. He gathered her in his arms, folding her into his roasting, enveloping, cherishing embrace. Every inch of her felt soothed and slack. They buried their faces in each other’s necks and hugged fiercely. Blackbirds twittered. Grass tickled Aphrodite’s calves. Their heartbeats drummed low.

“Have I said how much I missed you?” Ares whispered into Aphrodite’s ear.

She held him tighter. “You have, Honey Bear.”

“And have I mentioned how fucking good last night was?” A sultry tease sneaked into his murmur.

Aphrodite sighed romantically and kissed his neck. “Mmmm, it really was.”

“It really fucking was.”

They knotted together like vines and stayed there for a long moment. Eventually, Aphrodite leaned back, her knees shuffling in the lush grass. She stroked his chest, the heels of her hands massaging the tight pips of his nipples.

“You want something too?” She kissed his nose.

Ares kissed her chin, then her cheek, then her temple. “Nah, I’m good, Soda Pop. You just stay nice and relaxed.” He ran his hand over her smoothed, supple form, her back, her arm, her thigh. “Besides, I know you like needy spaniel mode.” He bounced his eyebrows and crunched into the apple again, still held in one hand.

She giggled. She eased into the gentle travels of his hand. How many months had she waited to feel this warm and safe again? She felt like a chick snuggled in a nest. She kept stroking around his torso. She studied his handsome, dreamy, trouble-maker face. 

_ Oh, right, I brought him out here for a reason. _

“I have something for you,” she said, a blush glimmering across her nose.

Ares frowned quizzically, dusting his knuckles up her flank. She slipped her hand into her pocket and drew out her fist. She opened it like a tulip between them. Nestled in her palm was a delicate silver pendant, with a row of five luminescent pearls curling along the chain. 

Ares frowned deeper. “I gave you this.”

Aphrodite nodded, stroking his face. “You did. Do you remember what I said to you then?”

Ares’ eyes flicked back to her, red. “Dirty stuff. So much dirty stuff.”

She laughed and prodded his nose. “Before that, you cad!”

Ares chuckled and stole a kiss from her pursed lips. She could taste a hint of herself under the sticky apple smearing his mouth. 

His smile turned wistful. His hand slipped from where it was massaging the small of her back, and he tickled the pearls in her palm. “You told me why you love pearls so much. Oysters spin them around wounds to heal. They’re beauty born of pain.”

Just like her, spun around the first wound. Not tainted by it, not ashamed of it. Stronger for it, soothing it. Healing the torn realm with her gift of love.

Just like him, the bandage around Zeus’ failures, plucked from that imprisoning shell, and treasured, and shining brighter than sunshine on water.

“Beauty born of pain.” Aphrodite echoed him, as if he’d spoken into a seashell. She cupped his chin and ran her thumb over his lip. “I think you should wear this for a little while.”

Ares gazed down at the pearls. Creamy sunlight danced on their surface. His eyes roved up to her, soft and full of faith. She melted into that gaze. He kissed her tenderly, deeply, sweet and worshipful and assuring. He bowed his head. She stroked his hair, then undid the clasp and fastened the pendant around his neck. 

He rocked back and flicked her a cocky smile. “How do I look?”

The delicacy of the chain was a little incongruous with his thick neck. The pearls glimmering in the dip of his collarbone looked like salt crystals in butter. 

Aphrodite sucked on her tongue. “Chic.”

“Yeah?” Ares ran his hand up her thigh.

“Yeah.” She massaged his shoulders and pecked his lips. “Regular cover girl.”

They chortled. They kissed. She closed him tighter between her legs. 

She broke their kiss, plucked his hand from her thigh and folded it up to touch the pearls. She looked steadily into his eyes, stilling him. She spoke seriously. “I want you to touch them like this, every time you think you aren’t good enough for this family. I want you to remember why I love them, and you.”

Ares gulped, his brow crinkling and his eyes lacing wet. He curled his fingers around the pearls and clutched them, then cupped her cheek and brought her into a passionate, adoring kiss. Aphrodite dissolved into it. She sank against his body, breathing his scent and the scents of the orchard, curling up on him like a cat on a radiator. Ares scooped her close and stirred her tongue with his. He heaved a sigh, lifting her up and down on the river raft rise of his chest. She floated on the feeling of it.

_ Fates, my love, kiss me forever, hold me forever.  _

They broke apart, his lips still tracing along the corner of her mouth and her jaw. She went dizzy and bubbly, her lips a little numb. He pushed her off his chest to sit straight, breathing out a laugh at how she grumbled and flopped in resistance against his hand. He hovered the dripping apple over the mound of her breast. He pressed his thumb into it. A fine trail of juice drizzled over her flesh. He growled quietly in his throat. His mouth sank and sucked. Heat pooled in Aphrodite’s abdomen. She looped her arms around his neck and swung back, her breasts bobbing up to encourage his tongue. 

Ares ran his lips along her skin, her breath speeding up and padding her flesh to his kiss. He smiled. “Feels like you’re ready for more.”

Aphrodite hummed low. She ran her hands to the waistband of his sweatpants. She hooked them and his underwear, and drew them gently down, unveiling his hard, darkening cock. She licked her teeth. She slid her seat over his tip and shivered, as he jolted up.

“Oh, Honey Bear…” she purred, “I always want more of you.”

Ares grazed her breast with his teeth. “You can have whatever you want, Soda Pop.”

The apple rolled into the grass.

*

Gold.

Gold surrounded Ares for miles. A vast, undulating country of it.

He stood in a wheat field, the late afternoon sun spilling copper over the stretching landscape, the waves of appetising gold vanishing into a soaring, cobalt sky. A gentle breeze brushed the ears of wheat. They swayed around Ares’ knees, tickling him and bowing under the weight of fat grain on thin stalks. Their malt hung in the air. Poppies and cornflowers sprinkled among them, like scattered confetti. A few chalk white, thatched farm buildings crowned the shallow rises. Swifts wheeled overheard, peppering black against the achingly blue sky. 

Ares rubbed the back of his neck and flexed it. The boy he’d met on the beach on the last day of the war wandered into his mind.

_ “I will tell them I saw you and you spoke of them with great honour. I will tell them you were proud and that you will be with them still as they lend their strength to other things.” _

_ “What other things?” _

_ “What other things? Their fields, their families, their lovers.” _

_ “Those things are not my province.” _

The pearls nestled into the hollow of his throat. 

His tunic felt pleasantly light without his armour. His body felt free, mobile, strong. He shook out his hands.

“Here goes nothing.”

He rotated his wrist. The air around his hand shimmered. He curled his fingers. They closed on the shaft of a gleaming sickle. Ares ticked his jaw, rolled his shoulders, and bent to the crop. He felled a swathe of it in front of him with one large, smooth sweep. The malt smell sprang up, as the stalks were sliced. Ares fell into a rhythm, cutting a fat path through the field, painting sepia over the gold, as the bright grain heads collapsed to the rich earth. The sun dipped lower, streaking the land ruddy. His tunic pasted to his back. His abs burned. His biceps ached. But it was a good feeling. A clean feeling. His mind poured into the repetition, the shape of the ground under his feet, and the savoury taste in the air. Aphrodite’s sweetness and pleasure and wonderful care still echoed inside him. It braided with this new energy in his body and strengthened him further. Time rested. He could have been there minutes or hours. Red shadow welled in the valleys.

“What's going on?”

Ares started at the sound of a reedy voice a few paces away. He stood up straight and drew the back of his hand across his brow.

He was here. The boy soldier from the beach. He looked less small out of that huge, hand-me-down cloak, but he was still awfully slight. Freed of the heavy garb of war, his gangly limbs looked agile. His green tunic brought out his emerald eyes, his face looked fuller, his hair thicker and neater. There was dirt under his fingernails. His freckles bunched around his very crooked, ex-broken nose, as he regarded Ares, stunned and wary.

“Hey, Kid.” Ares said awkwardly, waving the sickle.

The boy blinked. “Um… Hello… My Lord…”

Ares clucked his tongue and adopted a forced nonchalance. That emerald gaze made him prickly already. “How’s tricks?”

The boy scratched his head, his eyebrows floating up. “Tricks are… Fine?”

Ares nodded and pressed his lips together. He spun the sickle in his hand and the light whipped around it. He looked out to the flowing fields.

“What are you doing here?” The boy blurted, staring in shock at the half-mowed field.

Ares flinched. He looked down. He rested the point of the sickle on the pad of his index finger. He looked up into the boy’s bemused, expectant face. He had the same kind of interrogative perplexedness that Eros had. 

Ares huffed out a fortifying breath. “I’m being here, as you lend your strength to other things.”

The boy’s brow creased, then smoothed. His eyes brightened. The corner of his mouth pulled up. They looked at each other for a long moment, Ares feeling extremely scrutinised.

The boy broke his gaze and looked around at the felled wheat. He thumbed his ruined nose. “You're early, we don't start ‘til tomorrow.”

Ares bristled. “Oh, I'm sorry! Would you rather not have the help of a literal god?”

The boy grinned. “I'd love it. Just tomorrow.”

Ares’ mouth went flat. “Well, I'm busy tomorrow.”

“Another war to fight?”

“Some fucking sheep need sheering, or whatever.” 

“Funny time of year for that.”

“Kid, I swear to my old man!” 

The boy’s expression turned goading and sunny. Ares fought hard not to smile, it was good to see this. The lad had learned to be impudent, had learned not to bow and scrape to someone who had wronged him. His anger was a different flavour to the day on the beach, stronger, piquant, playful.

_ “Good, little maidens and shy school teachers and tired labourers, the poor and obscure and afraid. You lure their anger from them and make it the fire they use to forge their new world. You are raised up by challenge. You want to be faced. You want to see others stand tall, as you lend them your strength.” _

Ares chuckled, picked an ear of wheat and flung it at the boy. “Brat.”

The boy dodged the grain. “Takes one to know one.”

Ares snorted and put his fist on his hip, their smirks bouncing off each other, like light on bronze. “You never got me a cow in the end.” 

The boy shrugged. “The battle was over.”

Ares faltered. He sobered. He dropped his hands. He moved them behind his back and drew himself up tall, raising his proud chin.

The boy looked up and gawped. The sunset flared behind the God of War, half-silhouetting him, half-battling with his own golden blaze. It effervesced in his hair, flushed his skin, carved him out against the landscape, massive and impressive and other-worldly. Even in a simple tunic, even holding the plain farmer’s tool, Ares was magnificent. The boy’s bitter edge fled. He stood in awe, hot and blinded and flying.

The god spoke. It rumbled in the earth. “I am loyal to you in war and peace, in victory and defeat. Wherever you are, that is my province.”

The boy wanted to fall to his knees, to weep, to sob thanks and praise into the soil. But he could feel a powerful urge pulsing from this radiant vision. Looking at him made him want to stand tall, to be defiant and proud. Mighty. He balled his hands, puffed out his chest, and raised his chin. He pressed his fist to his heart.

Ares felt a surge of power under his skin. The boy’s face stood out bold in the intense scarlet and satsuma blaze. No matter how plain his clothes, how weak his body, how young he was, how scared, Ares knew it at that moment. This boy was going to be something remarkable. He already was.

_ “It takes someone special to be a warrior.” _

Ares appraised the boy once more, an intrigued half-smile on his lips, making the lad blush burgundy. 

Ares threw off his dazzling aura. “We’re losing the light. Help me out for another hour or so?”

The boy nodded. Ares summoned another sickle. The boy took it gingerly. It took him a few moments to settle into the reality of what was happening and get to work. He and Ares fell into rhythm, side by side, taking great pendulum swishes with the blades. The crop fainted before them. They moved through the field, like a tidal wave. Sweat patched their backs. Their breath huffed like bellows. The sun sank lower, casting their shadows long and spindly through the grain. 

Another row of wheat collapsed to them, the field now more flat than brush. The boy stopped, pressed and his hands into the small of his back, and arched his spine, cracking it and groaning. Ares paused and combed his fingers through his damp hair.

“You’re doing well,” the boy said, a little breathless.

Ares cocked an eyebrow. “Thanks.”

“I mean...” The boy tugged his elbow in front of him, stretching his shoulder. “Your technique’s a bit blunt. Sickles are more in the wrist than the shoulder.”

Ares ground his teeth. “Socking you in the jaw isn’t.”

The boy grinned. 

Ares rolled his eyes, but smiled irresistibly again. “Farming’s your calling, then?”

The boy’s grin flickered. He looked out to the horizon. It painted enchanting colours of fire and treasure across his soft, freckled features. “I don’t think war is my calling. But I do want more than this.” He cocked his head, working something out. “I think I was happiest when we were at sea.”

“Oh yeah?”

“The sea is amazing, don’t you think? All that endless possibility.”

Ares’ gaze followed those determined emeralds across the rolling land. He remembered the sunset on the beach. He remembered the vast waves. He thought of Aphrodite, his ocean jewel. “Yes,” he murmured.

“I want to sail again.” The boy’s voice was weighty with wishes.

Ares regarded him. “What would your parents think of that?”

The boy shrugged and looked down. “Who cares? I don’t know who my parents are. My tutor raised me, and I think he’d want me to make something of myself.”

Ares’ voice lowered, levelled. “Trust me, Kid. You’re something.”

The boy looked up at him, his eyes cupped with gold, and round and hopeful. 

“What’s your tutor like?” Ares asked.

“Oh, I’m pretty lucky in him.” The boy’s voice turned light and affectionate. “He’s kind and wise. Good at medicine, which is great because I’m always getting cuts and scrapes. Weird one, though, he’s a centaur.”

“A centaur?”

“Yes.”

“That is weird.” Ares scratched the back of his head. “Hey, where’s his cock?”

The boy choked. “Beg pardon?”

“His cock. Front legs or back? It’s always bothered me where a centaur’s cock is.”

“I would much rather not answer that question.”

“Suit yourself.” Ares picked an ear of wheat and chewed on the stem, his voice muffling around it. “I’ll talk to my Ma about you. She’s in the market for someone to patronise. I think she’d like your moxie.”

The boy’s mouth dropped open. “Is… Isn’t your mother… Her… Quee…”

“Yep.” Ares spat the wheat out and scratched his back with the point of the sickle. “So keep your sass to yourself.”

The boy nodded vigorously, hands trembling, as he gripped the handle of the sickle to stay sure he wasn’t dreaming. “Th… Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

The boy gulped. 

Ares stretched, his body blooming with aches, then relief. He rubbed his jaw. “Oh, what’s your name?”

The boy was still as a statue, stunned eyes wandering between Ares and the middle distance. He flinched back to awareness. “Oh! Um…” He straightened up and answered with new confidence. “Jason. My name is Jason.”

“Jason.” Ares nodded and flashed a grin. “Good, easy to remember.”

Jason beamed.

They returned to work. Ares begrudgingly took the lad’s advice about putting more motion in his wrist than his shoulder. He had to admit, he tired slower. The snip and rustle and flap of falling wheat made a pleasant chorus around them, crickets and swifts joining the song. Their silence was easy. A poppy kissed Ares’ ankle. He smiled down at it. He plucked it and tucked it into his belt. Aphrodite would like that.

Jason eyed him. “So…” he began curiously, “Seems you’re not bad at fields. What about family? And lovers?”

Ares swivelled a roguish look to him. He stood straight, cocked his head, rolled his shoulders, and let the deep, amber and rose sunset spill over his muscles and through his tousled curls. “You think I don’t have lovers?” he husked.

Jason’s cheeks glimmered. He looked quickly away and cleared his throat.

Ares smirked. “What about you? You’ve got a certain nervy charm I bet a dominant woman would go for.”

Jason’s eyes goggled, he turned the colour of the poppy at Ares’ belt. “Um…” he stammered, “Not yet.”

Ares grinned like a fox. “I'll put a word in.”

Jason bit his lip. He swallowed. “Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot.”

Jason shuffled his feet. Ares was struck again by how young he was. He waited patiently, nudging at the boy’s courage, as he felt him shrink. Jason pushed out his words on the end of a soft stutter. “W-what does it feel like? Having a lover?”

Ares scoffed. “I’m not giving you the sex talk, Kid.”

“What? No!” Jason’s teenaged voice cracked with embarrassment. He flailed his hand at Ares, as if erasing his phrasing to start again. He cleared his throat. “I just… I suppose I just mean love really. Being in love. Being loved.” His voice dropped, solemn. “The other men all talked about it a lot, towards the end.”

Ares quietened. He watched the memories and the wonderings pass across the boy’s honest, blemished face. He touched his fingertips to the pearls at his throat. He looked out to the horizon one more time, his body filling with the firelight. Olympus and his family and his Aphrodite were just beyond that rippling veil. Warmth spread through his body.

He spoke more to the beloved waiting for him, than to the curious boy at his side. His voice came barely louder than the breeze kissing the poppies’ puckered lips. “What does love feel like?” He stroked his finger over the petals at his belt. “It feels like home.”


	14. Beauty Born of Pain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Epilogue: Nine months later...
> 
> An end credits song for warming your Heart (see what I did there): [The Road Home, Heart](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9l53FlH5gJo)

“DAD! You have got to calm down!”

Ares’ stomach lurched, as Eros planted firm hands on his shoulders and jolted him out of his pacing. His son’s eyes glared sternly into his, bearing down on his rocketing anxiety.

“How?” he railed, “How am I meant to be calm? They won’t even let me in the room!”

“They did!” Eros exclaimed in exasperation, “You got yourself thrown out!”

Ares flushed and glowered. “Did you see the size of the needle they were waving around? No way is that going in my Aphrodite’s back! Her body is PERFECT and EXTREMELY DELICATE!”

“Dad, this is her ninth baby! Her pelvis is fucking stainless steel!”

Ares snarled and swept out of Eros’ grip. His boots screeched on the polished floor of the hospital waiting area, as he marched frantically back and forth, watched warily by a satyr rubbing the swollen belly of his nymph partner. She huffed rhythmically in a cushioned chair, next to a stack of rumpled health magazines. Ares chewed on the sickening reek of disinfectant in the sealed space. He felt dizzy. His palms itched. He kept hearing snippets of the goings on in the wards along the hallway that opened onto the waiting room. Cries of pain, bustling feet, steel specula clanking onto trays, the coughs and squeals of newborns. Each sharp, shrill noise made him jump out of his skin. Countless rages battered him, the people giving birth in pain, the stressed nurses, the terrified partners furious at having to face this powerless, the spikey indignation of parents and aunts and siblings told to wait outside. He kept gesturing wildly to shoot the shakes out of his body, and almost knocking out passers by. Eros hovered testily near him and threw apologetic looks to any onlookers. 

Ares heaved in through his nose. A dark, rich scent seeped into the pungent cleaning fluids. His heart pounded. A wave of nausea hit him. He doubled over, hands on his knees. 

Eros scampered to his side, putting a hand to his back. “You OK, Big Guy?”

Ares answered around panicked panting. “Can you smell that? Honey. Those fucking blood-sucking bees are buzzing around! What does that mean?”

Eros rubbed his back gently, but his tone was one of patience wearing thin. “Honey magic is used by all the melissae, it doesn’t mean anything. There’s nothing to worry about.”

Ares shot back up, reeling, clutching his fringe. “Are they even qualified midwives?”

Eros spread his hands. “Didn’t they nurse Gramps as a baby?”

Ares’ other hand flew to his hair as well. “And look how he turned out! Fucking Fates…”

Eros rolled his eyes and groaned. “Dad, this is your ninth time around the carousel too. Are you always this much of a mess?”

Ares’ face heated. His stomach somersaulted. His pulse banged around his arteries like a drunk charioteer. There was cold sweat on the back of his neck. “Uh…” He rumbled in his throat and forced his voice level. He thumbed the pearls around his neck, as he always did when he needed grounding. “It’s up and down. It’s… It’s been a bit of a year, I guess.”

Eros’ face softened. He watched the genuine fear and guilt clawing at his father, skittering around his face. He went to him and put his hands back on his shoulders, gently this time.

Ares started and looked into Eros’ brave, tender gaze. He felt his son’s support and admiration wash over him and quell some of the storm in his system.

“And you’ve done great,” Eros said sincerely, “Momma was saying to me just last week how easy this whole pregnancy has been, with you stepping up like you have. You started therapy, which is scarier than anything you do at work, by the way. You had it out with Gramps about staying off campaigns for a while. You got Storge to start showing us his art. You helped Agape get her GPA back up. You taught Ludus to finally do an actual handstand that doesn’t break everything in arm’s reach. I can shoot a bullseye without even looking now.”

Ares’ heart kindled. He twitched a smile. He looked into Eros’ sweet, loving eyes. His mother’s eyes. “I barely did anything,” he gruffed, “You’re such awesome kids.”

Eros squeezed his shoulders and looked at him firmly. “Awesome kids can accomplish a lot when they have an awesome Dad.” He pulled away and rubbed the back of his neck. Ares mirrored him. Eros continued, looking down, his arms folding over his broadening chest. “It’s been real nice having you actually here with us, you know. Like real, real nice. And now you’re here with Momma when she needs you too.” He glanced up. “I know it’s not been easy. It leaves you open to a lot, it leaves you raw. But how many families can honestly say our Dad does the difficult thing every time he’s called on? I was going to say ‘Duty calls, Soldier’, but for once that’s not who you’ve been, and we’re all really proud.”

Ares’ throat clogged. His heart swelled. He flung himself forward and wrapped Eros in an enormous hug, winding his son and lifting him off his feet. “Not as proud as I am of you, Baby Bear,” he whispered into Eros’ shoulder.

“Dad!” Eros wheezed, struggling uselessly, “Lungs!”

“Tough.” He squeezed tighter.

Eros wriggled out of his father’s strangling embrace and cuffed his bicep. They exchanged an awkward, affectionate glance. 

“Um, pardon me…” a polite voice sounded nearby.

Ares’ and Eros’ attention snapped to the hallway. A slight melissa stood just out of the doorway to Aphrodite’s ward. Her lilac scrubs had a streak of goop on the belly. Her long, buttery hair was bundled into a knot on top of her head, spiralled through with candy pink, which also swirled in her gold eyes and tinged her cheeks. A couple of fat bees drifted around her, looking slothful and satiated. She felt oddly familiar to Ares, but he couldn’t place her.

She opened out her arm in a welcoming gesture. “Do you want to meet your baby girl?”

Ares’ heart stopped.

“THANK FATES!” Eros yelped, springing forward and pelting down the corridor.

Ares glared after him. “You said there was nothing to worry about!”

Eros screeched to halt and rounded on his father, buffeting him with annoyance. “I was trying to keep you calm! I was terrified! THAT’S MY MOMMA BEAR IN THERE!” He skidded past the melissa, as if she was a traffic cone, and vanished into the ward.

Ares launched himself forward. He halted in front of the honey nymph, chest billowing, breath fleeing him. “They’re OK?” he murmured urgently.

The nymph smiled warmly up at him, her eyes turning pink grapefruit and sweet. “They’re perfect.”

Ares sighed out loudly. His body rushed. He went weak, heavy. Tears brimmed in his eyes. Before he could collapse, he flung himself into another rib-cracking hug, hoisting the shocked melissa to his chest. She let out a squeal of pleasant surprise, her feet flapping. He squeezed her like a teddy bear until the light-headedness passed. Then he dropped her like a sack of stones and barrelled into the ward. 

She steadied herself on the door frame, her chest and face hot. She fanned herself with a latex-gloved hand. One of her bees nudged her cheek teasingly. “Oh shush you,” she tutted, wafting it away.

As Ares’ bulk filled the door and entered the room, the other nymph midwives all drew back, looking either wary or entirely done with him. Eros and a nurse were tenderly swaddling the baby, tears trickling down Eros’ cheeks. Ares felt magnetically drawn, but first he needed to be with  _ her _ . His eyes fell to the bed. Aphrodite rested on a snowdrift of pillows, a light blue hospital gown rumpled around her, her long legs splayed and crooked and coated in a sheen of sweat. Her hair stuck to the sides of her face. There were deep shadows under her amethyst eyes. 

She was beautiful.

He raced to her. The bed groaned, as it took his weight. He slid carefully to her side, forcing his movements slow and gentle. Her eyes tore from Eros and the bundle of blankets. She blinked up at him blearily. 

Ares sniffed and stroked the hair from her face. “You OK, Plum Blossom? You both OK?”

She smiled. It was weak, but it was radiant. “All good, Honey Bear.”

“Did they use that drill on you?” he asked anxiously.

Even in her exhaustion, amusement twisted her mouth. “It’s an epidural needle, and no.” Her expression turned strange, wistful. “The pain just kind of subsided on its own. It was odd.”

“Hey, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” Ares laughed softly, expelling a tensely held breath. He kept tenderly stroking her hair. He pressed his lips to her clammy brow.

Aphrodite nodded her head into his kiss. “Come on, you big lug, put your arm around me. It’s comfier than hospital pillows.”

Ares hurried to obey her. He slid further onto the bed and helped her rearrange herself, guiding her around her soreness. He looped his arm behind her. She settled into the cradle of him. Her solid weight and sour, sweet scent were a balm after the horrible distance from her during the birth. He held her close, not too tight, but close.

Another nymph, with a bee perched on the point of her ear, took the bundle of blankets carefully out of Eros’ arms and walked with it towards the bed. Eros followed her, wiping his eyes, his cheeks mottled raspberry. The midwife smiled at Aphrodite and slowly lowered the baby into her arms.

“Here she is,” Aphrodite cooed into the bundle, scooping it to her heart, her eyes shining and spilling over her round, flushed cheeks, “There’s my girl.”

Ares looked into Aphrodite’s arms. 

It didn’t matter how often he experienced this, it was intense and fresh and overwhelming every time. Absolute joy. Absolute renewal. A perfect, terrifying, wonderful moment, when all the world fell away and nothing in the cosmos mattered or existed, except this blessing and his complete devotion to it. His heart was too big for his chest. His eyes were too big for his skull. He ached. He flew. He was anchored irrevocably to this tiny, helpless, fragile, spectacular child.

His daughter was the same sunflower yellow as him, but for a mask of lavender across her soft, crinkled face. Her eyes sparkled amethyst, blinking slowly up at him. Downy threads of dandelion hair stuck out from her tiny, round head. Ares flexed a tremor out of his hand and smoothed them down. She was warm. She was so warm. She was so soft.

“Have you guys got a name?” Eros croaked, his fingers still chasing tears around his cheeks.

Aphrodite and Ares looked up into each other’s eyes. Ares was knocked back by her beauty, by the radiance in her face. This miracle of a woman, holding life in her arms, as he held her.

They spoke in unison. They hadn’t discussed it, hadn’t had any idea what this child would be before she came to them. But in this moment, this moment of complete, uplifting clarity, they were certain. 

“Harmonia.” Harmony. Conceived as they reunited.

Aphrodite beamed tearfully into her lover’s face, then gazed back down at their daughter. 

Ares filled with promises. He couldn’t say any of them out loud. He couldn’t put them into words. He caressed Harmonia’s head and cuddled Aphrodite close. He pulled his hand from his baby with reluctance, reached to the back of his neck, and unclasped the pearl necklace he had worn every day for the past nine months. He laid it on his baby’s tiny chest. Her heartbeat thrummed on his fingertips.

“Hello, Little Pearl,” Aphrodite whispered, “Welcome to the world.”

Tears gushed freely down Ares’ face. He let them flow, let them carry the emotions words could not. He dropped his lips to Aphrodite’s hair, not taking his eyes from their precious child.

“Harmonia,” he murmured, “Welcome home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually can't believe this story's over! I had no clue when I first started sketching ideas for it that there was going to be this much to it and that it was going to mean so much to me. I'm truly touched by every supportive comment and share, this was a really personal journey and it made me so happy that it resonated with others. Thank you so much for coming along for the ride home!
> 
> Shameless plug, I keep getting side-tracked but I will definitely very shortly be kicking off a longer Aredite origin story - "All's Fair in Love and War", so if you love my darlings a smidgeon as much as I do, stick around!

**Author's Note:**

> Writing more serious topics is pretty off brand for me, but I love this family and felt it was worth exploring. I'm really fascinated by Ares' power to sense, feed off and manipulate anger, and how that conflicts with his family roles and his other facets and needs. I'm sure this only scratches the surface, but whelp, let's see how this goes! 
> 
> I just realised how much of this story relies on italicised text and overlapping voices - oopsies! If this presents any challenges for reading and you'd like a different format, please don't hesitate to comment and let me know how to help!
> 
> Remember when you're getting kinky, keep it Safe (check your technique), Sane (check your frame of mind) and Consensual (check your partner). Basics of BDSM [here](https://www.annsummers.com/bondage/help-advice/guide-to-bondage.html). Guide on bondage [here](https://www.annsummers.com/bondage/help-advice/choosing-the-perfect-restraints.html). Guide on impact [here](https://www.annsummers.com/bondage/help-advice/guide-to-spanking.html). Guide on anal play [here](https://www.sh-womenstore.com/blog/anal-pleasure-toys/). Some great starter discussions on what BDSM encapsulates [here](https://www.kinkly.com/6/8829/sex-tips/bdsm/bdsm-101/2). Have fun, lovelies!
> 
> If you need any more information or support regarding mental health, take a look at [Mind](https://www.mind.org.uk/)


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